Childish
by StArBarD
Summary: "Well, when I'm dealing with a child..." Sherlock's on the trail of a mad scientist when (Horror of horrors) he and his arch nemisis Moriarty get turned into toddlers! Caution: Excessive cuteness and good feels, reader beware!
1. What've I done?

John raced up the steps to 221b in a daze. The crisp winter air stung his lungs like thousands of icy needles tearing down the edges of his throat, making breathing an impossibly painful task, but he couldn't slow down.

Not now.

He threw open the door and in one fluid motion he spun around and slammed it shut, as if afraid of pursuers. There was silence in the flat.

He pulled the warm bundle from the crook of his arm and clutched it against his chest, panting and heaving painfully, beginning to wheeze. He gazed around his flat, ensuring that he was alone.

There was nothing.

The warm bundle shifted.

John's arms reflexively shot out like two flat planks, holding the murmuring, struggling thing as far away from himself as was physically possible.

John took deeper, slower breaths. He had begun to sob and needed to stop. The full impact of what he'd just done slammed into him and sent him buckling down onto his knees. He barely felt them bang against the hardwood floor, though he didn't doubt he'd develop bruises later. The loud noise startled him out of what was becoming a reverie as his mind floated in and out of the reality of the situation.

He brought the warm bundle closer to his chest in an awkward hug and coddled it for a moment, trying to think quickly without having his thoughts border on the strange and ever-shifting boundary between sane and not.

"Okay, okay, okay." John whispered, like a mantra that would magically come true if he continued chanting it. "Okay, okay, okay."

In his head, his thoughts were racing in perfect circles, screaming and panicking, much in the same way he'd like to have been.

"These things just don't happen, this isn't possible, it's not real." He assured himself silently, but when he dropped his gaze, he found his arms still wrapped tightly around the warm bundle. He suddenly felt a surge of cold fear, thinking he could suffocate the bundle, or squeeze it to death, so he loosened his grip and let the thing slide down until it balanced on his lap.

"Oh, what've I done, what've I done, what've I done?" His thoughts became a broken record of mournful disbelief. He swallowed hard and the warm saliva soothed his enflamed throat.

He stood up suddenly, staggering slightly under the added weight and imbalance of the struggling blanket, and managed to walk, almost calmly, to the couch where he dropped the thing with horror onto the cushion.

The thing gave a small cry of discomfort, a pathetic cooing noise no louder than a moan from someone who was troubled by a nightmare in deep sleep, and began to roll back and forth in an attempt to free itself from the confines of its cotton restraint.

John caught the thing's eyes for a moment, and was terrified to find them as sharp as black daggers, fully alert to the danger of the situation.

John stumbled away from it, content to let it free itself for the time being, and decided to peruse Sherlock's pile of junk that he'd been carefully constructing on the desk for a pair of shorts or a towel or something for the small child to wear.

To his pleasant surprise, he found a green shirt and a pair of khaki shorts just beneath a pile of crime scene photos. They looked like a close fit.

John picked them up and brought them back, and found that the tiny consulting criminal had freed himself from the blanket and was contentedly kicking his dangling feet off the couch, completely nude.

"Here, I found these. Put them on." John said, fully embarrassed, holding out the clothes to the infant genius.

Jim grinned and brought his fists up to his round cheeks. He blew a raspberry with his hands and giggled wildly.

"Come on, I know you understand me. Put on the clothes." John said angrily. He did not need to deal with this now.

Jim looked at John sharply, his cherub features darkening into a scowl. He opened his mouth and said "Abbada ba ba. Guchuu da baba! Hehehehe!" He broke off into manic laughter.

John looked down to the toddler, who had lain back on the couch to thrash about in a fit of laughter, and he looked to the clothes.

He crouched down until he would have been about eye-level with the tot (had he been sitting up) and stroked his chin thoughtfully.

"Maybe you can't understand me." he said, mostly to himself. Jim stopped laughing and sat up, glaring at John with his dark, lightless eyes.

He opened his arms, and made grabbing motions.

"Shuu!" he demanded "Chuu, bew shuuu! Loki dynamio!"

John glanced around the flat and tried to guess what the toddler wanted, but instead, he decided to use a technique he had developed dealing with Sherlock to clothe the toddler. He could always figure out what he wanted later.

"Okay, but not until you put these clothes on." He said handing them back to Jim, who took them and eagerly began shoving his legs into the pants backwards.


	2. Getting dressed

**I love children. This is not to be interpreted as creepy at all, but I love watching the neighborhood toddlers ride their trycicles around and race laps around their parents. There is something innately soothing and somehow fufilling in seeing a child play. It's like God's sign post which says "All is right in the world."**

* * *

John watched this silently, moving to help every once and awhile. The consulting criminal couldn't have been more than three years old at the most, two and a half if John was guessing correctly. How much did he remember about his life as a grown up? All of it? Was he still a consulting criminal in his mind? Or was he now just a child, with childish thoughts and wants?

John thought back, trying to piece together the events of the night. Maybe he'd missed some kind of important clue. Sherlock would've said he'd _seen but didn't observe_ something important. He combed over the facts carefully, delicately. He arranged them like he might've if he were to write a blog about the case so far.

Glancing at the consulting criminal playing with the zipper of his pants, he highly doubted that this case would ever see the internet.

Two days ago, in the early morning when only Sherlock was ever awake, a Doctor Genil had stopped by Baker Street, complaining that his partner was conducting experiments in the lab at night. He had explained that he represented a small team of biologists, genealogists and chemists that were on contract from a government agency working on a highly dangerous chemical weapon, unlike any the world had ever seen before and that his associate, one Doctor Fether, had been working at the lab until early in the morning when he would leave, then return at his normal working hours to work the day through.

He didn't appear to be working on their project, because at the end of every day Dr. Genil would personally check the progress of the agent (codenamed Agent Y for the interview) and no progress had been made during the night when he'd checked the next morning.

"What then…" John thought watching Jim, the once renowned and feared consulting criminal struggle to push his head through an arm-hole of the shirt. "What was he working on?"

That was all that Sherlock had told him, but yesterday a break in the case had come in the form of Lestrade demanding to know why they were investigating the disappearance of one of the scientists and what they had discovered.

After a few minutes of vigorous questioning (When Lestrade would question Sherlock, Sherlock would ask another question, Lestrade would answer it and Sherlock would add a few follow up questions, completely ignoring Lestrade's first question) they had managed to gather that there was no such person as Dr. Fether, and that Dr. Genil was covering the disappearance of his work-mate by having them do a false investigation.

And also, Sherlock discovered, Dr. Genil was entangled with Moriarty somehow. He'd alluded to it heavily, but being Sherlock, had refused to fully explain it to John until he'd had all of the facts, or a dramatic way of describing it.

As John straightened out Jim's shirt, and the baby-face of the two-year-old consulting criminal emerged, he had a sinking feeling that the parts that Sherlock had omitted were the keystones to the investigation.


	3. I'm coming

**Here comes another character!**

* * *

John's phone rang, and Jim lunged for his pants, but John stepped aside and the child-criminal toppled off the couch and onto the floor.

Jim lay still for a moment face down in the carpet, and John froze in terror.

First, one sob; then two more in quick succession. Suddenly Jim screamed and looked up, tears streaming from his eyes and nose, red face twisted in the most pitiful expression of sadness and pain.

Jim wailed, his chubby fists wiped fat tears from the corners of his eyes, and John, in spite of himself, melted.

He scooped up the child and balanced him on one hip, bouncing slightly and hushing his crying with sweet nothings.

"Shhh, shhhh… there, there. It's alright." He said, feeling ridiculous.

"Don't cry. Big boys don't cry." John said soothingly. Jim let another squeal of misery escape him.

"You're a big boy, aren't you?" John asked, wondering who had texted him in the first place.

Jim looked at John scathingly, as if to say "I'm not a big boy, I'm a little boy, don't make fun of me, the situation's bad enough as it is."

"Alright, sorry."

John pulled out his phone and looked at the message, nearly dropping Jim again when he saw the caller ID.

He mashed his phone buttons with one finger in a mad dash to open the text.

Sherlock

**I'm coming over. –SM**

SM? Did Sherlock hit the wrong button while he was texting? Impossible, he always proof reads his texts. Sherlock was a Grammar _Nazi_.

"SM. SM? Slender Man? SM…" John thought for a minute, before it suddenly broke upon him in a dazzling burst of obviousness.

SM. Sebastian Moran.

"Oh, man." John groaned. He bounced Jim slightly, wondering how much time he had before his flat would be invaded by the master marksman and serial murderer.


	4. Johnny Grab Your Gun

Jim reached out and placed four warm fingers on his lips. John blew a raspberry into them and made Jim chuckle. The consulting criminal then kicked him hard in the stomach with one quick swing of his surprisingly firm leg, making John double over.

"Urgh! What was that for?" John asked as the shrunken criminal began to shove him viciously.

He tried, as gently as he could, to place the child on the ground, but it was difficult with Jim writhing and squirming like a snake, making small feral animal noises.

The toddler leapt to the floor and ran straight to the television set.

"Are you bored?" John asked watching Jim play inquisitively with the dials. Suddenly the screen flickered to life and the roar of a crowd of exhilarated spectators at a cricket match blasted the toddler away from the glass screen. He stumbled back and fell, eyes wide with awe and wonder.

John picked the remote up from his chair and flipped through the channels until he found a children's show he thought would be appropriate for a toddler of Jim's (approximate) age. He picked him up, surprised at the dead weight of the gleeful tot, who seemed to be hypnotized by the bright colors and high pitched voices that the television was emitting, and placed him back on the couch, thinking only of the hundred or so times his own mother had told him 'Get away from the telly, you'll hurt your eyes sitting that close to the screen'.

He stepped back, testing his theory that the child would be occupied by the programing long enough for him to prepare for the arrival of the sniper, and to his relief Jim remained stoically frozen in place, completely immersed in the cartoon world.

John raced up stairs quickly, hoping that a childish Jim wasn't as changeable as the adult Jim, and made a mad dash for the night stand in his room. He threw the drawer open, grabbed his Browning, and with trembling fingers loaded it. The bullets felt cold and slippery, and he dropped them clumsily a few times, cursing his nerves.

It wouldn't matter; when the time came he could rely on having a steady hand.

A car door slammed somewhere on Baker Street. John's hands suddenly became eerily still. A cold stone of fear dropped into his stomach with a sickening thud, and dissolved into a numb wariness.

He calmly walked downstairs.


	5. To kill, of not to kill

He glanced once around the flat. Jim was still watching television, only he'd climbed off the couch in order to sit closer to the screen. John stared at him silently, as the flickering colors were reflected off his hunched back.

He had a mad thought. "What if I was to kill him now?" and he clutched his gun tightly in his balled fist.

There he was. Jim Moriarty. Sitting on his floor. Completely unawares. The man who had caused so much pain, killed so many people, the Napoleon of Crime. Finally he was just as vulnerable as each and every one of his victims.

Here he was. John Watson. At the top of the stairs with the gun in his hand. The man who had been so cruelly wronged just a few short years ago. Who had suffered the anguish of losing a friend, the humiliation of crawling back to his therapist, unable to cope with the agony, losing his job, losing his purpose in life; and let's not forget about the semtex vest, shall we?

John loosened his grip on the gun and held it in the tips of his fingers, dangling at his thigh. He plodded into the kitchen and started hunting around for a clean teacup.

The temptation was there. It was palpable in the air. He could do it. No one would have to know. It would be over so fast, and over for good. No more waking up at night wondering if the creak on the stairs is an assassin, or checking to make sure the mail doesn't have the Thieving Magpie wax seal on it, or wondering if the smuggling ring that they're investigating has been given the key to their flat.

John peeked into the living room. The child was still sitting on the floor, absorbed by the show. Jim started bouncing in time to the music, making small humming noises.

John looked back to his kettle, feeling a bit ashamed.

If he had been a child, if the tables had been turned, he had very little doubt that Moriarty would kill him. Or, at least use him against Sherlock somehow. That was what professional criminals did.

John was not like Moriarty. He was not evil, he didn't commit crimes for sport, and he wasn't malicious to strangers.

He was the good guy. He and Sherlock were on the side of the angels. Maybe if the tables were turned, things would be different, but this was his choice. He could choose to kill or not to kill.


	6. Turning Tables

**Flashbackattack!**

* * *

"If the tables had been turned." John thought bitterly. "They could have easily been turned."

He thought back to the horror of the night, which had begun innocuously enough: Sherlock had texted him to bring a crowbar, wear gloves and to meet him at Angelo's; they were going house breaking. Again.

They had skulked along in the shadows of the government facility, where Dr. Genil had been working with the fictional Dr. Fether, and a long black car had pulled up alongside them, not entirely unlike the cars that Mycroft used to schedule 'conferences' every now and again. It slowed down for a moment, and then drove off casually. That seemed important.

After breaking into the lab, they had found blood and evidence of a struggle. Enough to reassure them that Dr. Genil was definitely hiding something about the disappearance of his assistant.

What had happened after that was a bit of a blur to John, he remembered walking out of the lab, and turning to find Sherlock was not following him. He went to reenter the lab, but the door swung shut before he could reach it, and locked with a terrifying finality.

Every door had a small rectangle of glass above the knob, not unlike the windows on a school door. John peered into this window and saw Sherlock approaching Moriarty, alone.


	7. The Kettle Whistled

The kettle whistled.

John poured his tea and listened to the soothing sound of running water over porcelain. He paused, ears perked, when another noise caught his attention.

The sound of creaking wood.

John put down his cup gently, so as not to make a sound, and picked up his Browning, clicking off the safety and creeping stealthily through the kitchen.

He said a silent thank you to Sherlock for not letting him fix the squeaky stair when he had the chance as he positioned himself behind the wall, where he would be cover should this little 'meeting' turn into a fire fight.

John imagined the sniper creeping stealthily up the stairs, small weapon drawn, trembling with excitement, every hair standing on end, every sense alert to danger, crawling into the layer of the beast, preparing to take back his boss by force if necessary. John checked his own weapon again, realizing that if he could corner the marksman he might be able to force him to return Sherlock.

John ducked around the corner, checking on Jim, who was still immersed in his show. He hadn't moved, and wasn't paying attention to anything that seemed to be happening around him.

Good. He wouldn't be a problem. John leaned against the wall, feeling the secure steadiness of the wood reinforce him.

One false move and it could cost them both their lives.

The wooden door swung open, almost noiselessly, except for the practically silent crick that was barely uttered when the door swung about halfway open.

John heard it. He was prepared.

He allowed the marksman some time to look around, and then a few more seconds to step inside. His breath caught in his chest, like a laugh that refused to escape.

John heard a sigh. No, no…A _gasp!_

It was time. John rolled out from where he'd been hiding, gun drawn, aimed directly at the tallest object in the room, Sebastian Moran.


	8. Haggling With Guns

The sniper caught his eyes, and a brief gleam of outrage and fury flashed dangerously in the cold blue orbs.

John had been prepared for a lot of things, but he was taken aback by the state of the sniper.

For one, he thought that an assassin, any assassin, would bring a small gun to a one-on-one encounter. But no, Moran had brought the Von Herder, a massive, black, gleaming sniper's rifle with a barrel as long as his thigh. He held the unwieldy thing with one bare, muscular arm, the stock nestled into the crook of his elbow. He swung the enormous gun around nimbly, and leveled his sights directly at John.

John ignored the gaping black barrel of the gun aimed on him, he was more interested in Sebastian's other arm. The other hand clutched the wrist of a dark haired boy, no more than two and a half years old, who was forced to stand on the tips of his toes as Moran yanked his arm.

"_Sherlock?"_ John's jaw dropped.

"That's right." Moran growled, bringing John's focus back to the gun, back to him. "I'll cut you a quick deal, let me leave here with Jim, and I'll let you keep your pint-sized flat mate."

"Fine." John said, stepping into the room from behind his wall of security. "Let him go first."

Moran chuckled grimly. "No, no. I'll hold onto him until I have Jim. Once you've got your flat mate, I lose the assurance of a free pass outta here."

John corrected his sights slightly; if he were forced to shoot now, the bullet would definitely pass through the bridge of Moran's nose.

"How do I know you won't just run out of here with Sherlock? Let him go." John's voice became low and deadly. "Now."

Moran kept his level tone. "How do I know once you have him, you won't just shoot me?"

"I've had Jim alone in the flat for about half an hour now." John said, beginning to sweat nervously. "If I wanted to kill anyone, it would've been him, and I would've done it by now."

Moran nodded, a grim smile twisting its way out of the corners of his lips. "True, true."

He looked into the Browning curiously, as though he were seeing it for the first time. A flickering of light dancing in his eyes was the only indication of the subtle, quick, calculations running through his head.

"Look, level with me here mate; I can barely hold onto one kid as it is, running out of here with two is impossible and I'm not leaving here without my boss and my gun. With me so far?"

John nodded.

"When I grab my boss, the kid is yours, deal?"

John nodded again, feeling like a child himself, having something obvious explained to him.

"So how about dropping the gun a bit and we'll start the trade? Yeah?"

John dropped the gun a minute fraction of an inch, so that if he were forced to shoot, the bullet would more than likely pass clean through Moran's throat.

Moran grimaced and shook his head. "It's a start." He said.


	9. Jam

He pulled Sherlock back a few feet, lifting him into the air more than once, and keeping the Von Herder leveled, somewhat unsteadily, at John.

John followed him with the barrel of his gun, wincing slightly as Sherlock whimpered in pain. His arm must've been hurting him by now. John could feel it himself.

As soon as Moran stepped in front of Jim and the television, the tiny criminal gave a cry of annoyance. He looked up to his killer-for hire with an expression of outrage and scowled darkly.

"Oi! Camama guchidu labama que!" Jim babbled angrily. Moran paid little heed, securing his rifle with a short grunt, so that when he bolted out of 221b Baker Street like a fox from the hen coop, he wouldn't have to worry about dropping it, or having it knock into things.

In a flash, Sebastian dropped Sherlock, who fell to the ground with a sigh of relief, bent over and scooped up little Jim in his one free arm. Jim squealed in protest, kicking and writhing ferociously.

John fell down on one knee and beckoned his friend.

"Come here Sherlock!" he said in a tone just deeper than Jim's furious baby-talk.

Sherlock picked himself up off the floor, wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt, and gazed up to his flat mate. He smiled softly, full of relief and joy, and he opened his arms in a welcoming hug.

"Jam!" he cried happily, running into John's protective embrace. John picked Sherlock up and balanced him on his hip, surprised at the emotion his usually stoic flat mate was pouring onto him. But then again, his usually stoic flat mate now looked to be only about two years old.

John took a good look at Sherlock, noting that Sebastian Moran had found a purple shirt and black pants in children's sizes. His friend's usually chiseled cheek bones were now rounded and soft as they worked to bury the face into John's cream colored jumper. He still had the mop of unruly black curls; only now his hair was wilder, sticking out in mad directions.

"Jam, Jam, Jam!" Sherlock declared in a childish tenor, nothing at all like his usual deep, rumbling baritone. He glanced up from where he'd nestled into John's chest, and John saw his trademark quicksilver eyes gleaming with joyful light.

"It really is you, isn't it? Sherlock?" John asked the child, only half expecting an answer.

In response he got a tremulous "Jam?"

John smiled, "Are you talking to me? I'm not Jam."

Sherlock stared at him levelly, gazing much too long, and seeming much too intelligent for any normal two-year-old child. There was something soft, a remembrance in his eyes that scared John for a moment.

Sherlock nodded. "Jam." He said assuredly.


	10. He Doesn't Want to Go

Meanwhile, Sebastian was having a tremendous amount of trouble keeping hold of Jim. His plan had been to scoop up his boss and run home to his hideout/ lair and then figure out Step 3 to his plan there, in the confines of his own home, perhaps safely on his own couch eating his own left over calzone that had been in his fridge when he had parted with his rooms that morning.

He did not, however, expect that he: prize fighting, big game hunting, ex-military, Sebastian 'Basher' Moran, would have trouble holding onto a struggling toddler mid-temper tantrum. If it had been anyone else's kid he might've slapped it once or twice to shut it up, but no, it was his boss, Jim Moriarty, whom no one dared to slap.

He glanced from his boss, to John Watson, to the door nervously. At any second he expected the Browning to raise itself at level sights with his eyes again, and for the Doctor to be on the phone with the cops describing how he'd 'walked in' on someone breaking into his apartment, or maybe he'd even go so far as to tell the operator the truth. Hell, maybe he'd explain it to his Inspector friend and they'd have a laugh about it right in front of him. It made him warm just thinking about it.

"Stop it Jim." Sebastian pleaded, receiving one or two kicks in his thigh for all of his troubles.

Jim squealed, bit, and kicked viciously. He did _not_ want to leave in the middle of his program, and he was making sure everyone knew it. He squirmed in circles under Moran's arm, stuck his limbs out like a starfish, and dug into Sebastian's hand with his tiny, needle-like nails.

"We have to…go!" Moran tried to fight his way to the door, almost dropping his Von Herder in an attempt to secure his boss.

Jim saw his opportunity and bucked tremendously, sliding down lower beneath Sebastian's arm.

Moran knew what Jim was doing just before it happened but with his hands full, he was helpless to stop it.

Jim swung his foot in a perfect arch until it connected with the seat of Sebastian's jeans.

Moran groaned, dropping his precious Von Herder to the ground with a terrific clatter, and allowing his infant boss to hop to the ground and clamor his way back to the couch.

Moran sucked air through his teeth, realizing that his face was turning red with pain and anger. He counted backwards from ten and limped over to a nearby chair, which he collapsed into, curling into a tight ball of pain, blinking tears from his eyes.

John snickered quietly, fearful that a loud laugh might infuriate the serial killer in his chair. Sherlock however laughed out loud. John shushed him, surprised at the chiming melodious quality of his childish laughter.

Moran looked up, fearful, confused and weary of being cornered.

"He-he doesn't want to go…?" He asked himself aloud, puzzled beyond reason.

"He must want to finish the program he's watching." John said.

Moran looked from the Browning, to where Jim had planted himself on the couch with alarm.

"You can stay… for a while…if you want?" John offered before he could realize what a terrible idea this was.

Moran stared at Jim, his foot-and-a-half-tall boss sitting on the sofa contentedly, and weighed his options. He couldn't leave without his boss; he couldn't leave without his gun. If he left his boss, he might change back into a man, and the adult Jim Moriarty did not care for traitors. Let's face it, leaving Jim, the two-year-old criminal, to fend for himself in a room full of his sworn enemies would be the ultimate betrayal. His gun however had been used in dozens of unsolved assassinations. Leaving it behind would give Scotland Yard all the evidence they needed to nail him, and tie him to a slew of unsolved homicides. Beyond that it was his favorite gun; there wasn't another one like it in the world.

He could shoot John Watson, let Jim finish his precious program, and then walk out with no fuss. That sounded like the better plan. But John Watson had been standing in the room with a Browning trained on his face for almost five minutes without killing him. It seemed dishonest to kill someone who had plenty of reason to kill him, and hadn't. Beyond that, it was just plain scummy.

"You won't call the Police?" Moran had to ask, glancing up uncertainly at the Ex-army doctor. He didn't know what to make of John Watson; never had.

John smiled knowingly, "And tell them what exactly? 'Oh hey, do you know that assassin Moran? Well guess what? He's in my flat watching telly. He won't leave until his two-year-old boss finishes his show. See you in ten minutes?'"

Moran eased into the chair, his sore parts beginning to numb and the fear fading into a tired alertness.

"Point taken." He said.


	11. Hungry?

Sherlock began to squirm uncomfortably in John's arms and John recognized the signals that indicated he wanted to be put down. He carefully eased Sherlock onto the floor, where he gingerly landed on his feet, as though uncertain that his small limbs would hold him.

He stood still next to John for a moment, then trotted over to the couch, grabbed onto the cushions with his small fists and hoisted himself next to Jim. He nestled into the couch comfortably, and began to watch the show that had so immersed Jim, side-by-side with his nemesis.

Sebastian and John watched; feeling numbly detached from the whole scene, as though the two toddlers were isolated phenomenon happening beneath a glass case, or an experiment on television.

"I'll be damned." Moran said with feeling.

"Who knew?" John muttered breathily, wondering how long the unsteady truce would hold.

He walked over to Sherlock's chair, stood uncertainly for a moment, and collapsed into the soft, unfamiliar confines. He absently watched the children's programing, glancing over at the two toddlers every so often, and wondering; now that the immediate danger of losing Sherlock was over and dealt with, how was he going to get the grown-up Sherlock back?

When the program ended, Moran stood up and walked over to collect Jim. John felt the Browning in his pocket and knew that Moran could also feel its presence, even if he didn't see it. He wasn't quite as worried about Moran grabbing Sherlock anymore, having spent a safe half-hour with him. Still, better _safe_ than…the alternative was unthinkable.

"Come on Jim, it's time to go home. See what we can do about your…condition."

Sebastian bent down to scoop Jim in his arms, but Jim knocked his arms away persistently.

"No!" Jim shouted.

"Wha- your little show is over, it's time to go!" Sebastian exclaimed, wondering if he did end up hitting Jim, would the consulting criminal remember it when he grew back up.

If he grew back up.

"Hungwe!" Jim explained, rubbing his round tummy in pitiful circles.

"Umwe!" Sherlock chimed, mirroring Jim's motions over his stomach.

The two toddlers entertained themselves by chirping choruses of "Hungwe, Umwe!" and rubbing their chubby stomachs, kicking the cushions with their bare feet.

"You can eat when we get home!" Sebastian cried, at the end of his rope.

Jim flopped down on the couch, kicking his legs furiously and crying "Noo-o-o-o!"

"Little brat!" Sebastian snapped.

Jim stopped moving and stared up blankly at him. His eyes were the cold black pits that Sebastian remembered so well from before, and no humor rested in their depths.

"Err…" The blank look was always the look which made Moran buckle to his boss's demands, even the unreasonable ones.

"We could find something…around here." John said, admittedly startled by Sherlock's declaration for food. As an adult he'd never eat, or at least he'd never ask for food. As a two year old, he must have been too young to train himself not to eat when he was busy.

"Actually, I think I have just the thing. It's in the car, if you'll wait." Moran said sheepishly.

"Sure." John said taking a seat beside Sherlock.


	12. Ravioli

Moran left his Von Herder; the ultimate act of trust in his book, propped against John's chair and ran down the seventeen stairs of 221b and into the crisp night air, which stung his bare arms like a swarm of wasps. In his car, in the worn out, beaten up, blue duffle bag which he always used in assassinations to carry his myriad of equipment he had the meal that he always ate during stake outs.

He fished it out of his bag now, sighed happily and ran back into 221b, shaking the cold and the pain out of his arms.

He reentered the flat cautiously, in case John had decided in his absence that he was too dangerous to trust and was waiting to pop him full of lead from behind the door, but John was just where he had left him. Neck deep in children.

Sherlock had decided to lounge across John's lap, which gave Jim sufficient distraction to wrap around John's neck and cling to his back like a baby koala. Jim was too small to do any real damage, but John did seem a bit uncomfortable with the idea that the person who had tried to kill him so many times currently had his hands around his throat.

"I got it." Sebastian said smiling inwardly, and wishing that he had his phone to take a picture with.

"Canned Ravioli?" John read the label skeptically.

"Yeah. This's all I ate when I was a kid." Sebastian said tossing the can from hand to hand. "Well, it's all I eat now, but still…"

John lifted Sherlock off his lap without complaint, but when he tried to unlatch Jim's little fingers, the toddler squealed in his ear. John sighed and stood up with Jim still clinging to his neck and extended his hand for the can.

Sebastian tossed him the can, thinking quietly to himself "Something is _very_ not right with this picture."

"How do you make it?" John asked turning around. Sebastian saw the offer and scooped Jim from off John's back. Jim immediately swung around and started clinging to Sebastian, cooing happily.

"Just put it on the stove top and heat it up. Haven't you had this before?"

John started for the kitchen. "No." he said blankly.

Sebastian sank into John's chair with Jim still on his hip. "You had no childhood." He said, half-playfully as his boss nestled into his shoulder. Jim was surprisingly warm, and soft; two things that had never before been attributed to the Napoleon of Crime.

Sherlock watched John blankly as he moved across the room, interacting with the other people, people that were not him, doing other things, things that were not with him. He stared silently until John went to leave the room altogether.

Sherlock eased himself off the cushions and dropped onto the floor cautiously. Once he was sure he wouldn't fall down he trotted through the living room and searched for the exit John had used. He identified it from the noises coming from the kitchen, and headed wobbly towards where he thought John was.

"Heads up; you've got a follower." Sebastian said as Jim pushed his head against his shoulder and into his neck.

John looked down and saw Sherlock staring up at him. He paused, to see if the toddler wanted anything in particular. Sherlock continued to stare.

He went to get a clean (experiment free) pot from a cupboard across the kitchen and was shocked when he looked over his shoulder to find the toddler waddling behind him.

John smiled softly. "What are you? A duck?"

A ripple of unidentifiable emotion passed Sherlock's face as he lifted his arms up to John, pleading to be picked up.

John looked doubtfully at the eye of the stove, becoming red with extreme heat. He imagined Sherlock's bare feet dangling over the bubbling pot and the scream that would come if he were to be scalded.

"No, no. Not right now. Later, when I'm done cooking. Okay?" John said, kneeling down to  
get closer to Sherlock's height.

Sherlock nodded; his face a mask of empty emotion. He walked away from John dejectedly, head hanging and lip trembling; not that he'd ever let John see him so upset.

John dumped the lumpy, slightly disgusting contents of the can into the pot, reviling in how the slimy squares retained the shape of the can, even after being freed from their cylindrical prison. He beat down the cylinder of meat and sauce with a long spoon and attempted to stir the concoction without breaking the ravioli and revealing the gray, unidentifiable meat-like substance inside.

"Hey," Came a cry from the sitting room. "Is the kid supposed to be in all those beakers and tubes and stuff?"

John spun around to find Sherlock clamoring over the kitchen table, which had long been conquered as his lab bench. He crawled precariously over beakers of noxious acids and groped at piles of white and yellow powder, kicking dangerously close to the switch of the Bunsen burner as he made his way across the mine field of chemical equipment.

"Sherlock!" John cried. Sherlock froze, like a rabbit in headlights.

"Get off of that! Get away from there!" John said standing on his toes and attempting to pick Sherlock up off of his bench without upsetting something that could blow up the flat.

Sherlock gave John a sad, angry look which said "It's my bench, John. How do you expect me to turn back to normal if I can't experiment on myself?"

John held Sherlock against his chest for a moment, making sure that nothing important (or deadly) had been upended. When he was satisfied he examined the toddler, searching painstakingly for powder, or blood, or acid on his hands and clothes.

Sherlock's hands were frosted white with a sugar-like powder, which sparkled under the kitchen light's dull glow. John sighed, reached over the stove and turned the pot down to a simmer. He would have to wash the dust off of Sherlock's hands.

He grabbed a stool from the bench and brought it up to the sink, and carefully made Sherlock stand on it. Sherlock looked at him angrily, as if exclaiming "This is foolish, John".

John turned on the water, checked to make sure it was cool and grabbed Sherlock's hands in his own. Sherlock cried out; not particularly happily, or upset, but with interest. John turned his hands over and exposed Sherlock's powdery palms to the running current.

Suddenly a thought struck him which drained all of the breath from his lungs. His own hands engulfed Sherlock's. Sherlock's hands, which had always been massive white spiders, long and spindly, were now soft and small.

He had to focus, and really make himself think "These are _Sherlock's_ hands!" before the notion really sank in. His flat mate, his friend was a toddler. A small child. Barely an infant.

His massive six-foot-tall flat mate was standing on a stool having his hands washed for him. His small, chubby, soft hands.

John put a small dot of soap on Sherlock's hands and made him rub them together. Sherlock cooed in compliance. John felt dizzy.

He rinsed Sherlock's hands off, and reached to get a towel, but Sherlock decided that John deserved a quick splash and flung droplets of water from the tips of his fingertips at him, giggling mischievously. The icy drops hit John's hot face and stunned him out of another disorientating bout of disbelief.

He smiled, easing his heaving stomach and found a clean dish cloth to pat Sherlock's hands dry with. Sherlock enjoyed the attention until John picked him up and placed him outside the kitchen. The ravioli was beginning to smell somewhat appetizing and soon would need to be split in between two bowls for the tots. It immediately became apparent that there wouldn't be enough for the adults, but that didn't matter much to John if Sebastian didn't mind.


	13. Talking

John found one soup bowl and one clean mixing bowl which he divided the pasta into evenly and managed to salvage two clean forks from the Drawer of Lost Silverware.

He carried the bowls into the living room, where the only free table was, and set Sherlock's bowl in front of where Sherlock was sitting.

Sebastian motioned for silence, as Jim seemed to have fallen asleep on his shoulder. John shrugged and sat down in his chair, but not long after he'd sat down Jim hopped off of Sebastian's lap, smelling food and seeking it out instinctively, like a baby monkey.

John watched Sherlock twirl his fork around in peculiar loops until the pasta found its way to his face somehow. Jim abandoned his fork shortly after deciding it was too tricky to use.

"Should we talk about it now?" John asked.

Sebastian shrugged "What is there to say?"

"I don't know." John muttered running his fingers through his hair. "What happened, what did Jim tell you, what was that gas cloud, any ideas on how the hell we're going to change them back?"

"Funny, that was almost exactly what I was going to ask you."

John smiled. "Have you ever heard of a Doctor Genil?"

Light came to Sebastian's face. "Yeah." He said, choosing his words carefully, uncertain of what his boss would deem acceptable to divulge in light of his 'condition'. "Jim's been muttering that name under his breath for a few days."

John related, in short, the story of Doctor Genil their client and the fictional Doctor Fether.

"I'll be damned." Sebastian said looking down at the two feasting toddlers. "I didn't know any of this! Jim just says, grab a gun, we're going house breaking. That's all the warning I've had!"

He was silent for a moment, looking wistfully at his boss.

"If-" He corrected himself quickly. "_When_ he grows up, I'm going to get the whole story, even if I have to hold him at gun point to do it."

"So you don't know anything?" John asked desperately.

"I know that Jim was promised some kind of chemical weapon for doing something, but he hadn't been paid." Sebastian leaned back in his chair thoughtfully. "People don't skip out on a bill from Moriarty."

John nodded. "That explains what you were doing there, anyway. So, no idea what Moriarty was doing for him?"

Sebastian shook his head. "No clue. Not my division."


	14. Transformation

John rubbed his tired face. He thought back to lab, the horror of seeing Moriarty and Sherlock come face-to-face, and being trapped behind a locked door. He'd slammed his fist against the glass and screamed, but neither genius flinched; they couldn't hear him.

The two rivals exchanged a few words, Sherlock with his back turned to John, and Moriarty looking gleefully sinister as he studied his opponent minutely.

John didn't know how long they talked; minutes, perhaps seconds passed like hours. But he became aware of a low, sinister hissing, like a snake in the air ducts above him.

Instantly, the word "Gas" flashed through John's mind like a warning beacon, and he began hammering against the glass, desperate to warn Sherlock. It seemed as though as soon as John had wanted to alert Sherlock, the lanky detective was already looking hastily at the air ducts in alarm.

To John's horror, a white, milky gas began to waft from the metal slits, like the thick London fog bleeding into the lab, and curl around the heads of the two enemies.

All of a sudden, Moriarty and Sherlock leapt at each other, clawing and grabbing for something that John just couldn't see, locked in each other's arms and rolling on the floor. The mysterious gas became impossibly thick, and clouded the two enemies from sight.

The two silhouettes struggled in the fog, tossing one another over and over until it was impossible to tell who might be who in the chaos of the frothing cloud.

Suddenly, the two shadows lurched violently; one was kneeling over the prostrate form of the other. John blinked a few times, disbelieving what he saw, but as he gazed on to the scene it happened again, and again.

The shadows began to shrink.

With a shudder and a sudden start, the shape of the silhouettes became smaller, rounder, and ceased to resemble the men who had disappeared into the mist.

The one person who had gotten the upper hand in the fight collapsed on top of whoever had lain down, and hadn't moved since.

John had seen enough; he stepped away from the door, cursing himself for not thinking of doing this sooner, and shot through the window. Instantly an alarm went off, with flashing red lights and an ear-splitting siren wailing through the empty halls of the facility. John stuck his hand through the broken glass and groped around for the lock, holding his breath as the swirling mist surged into the fresh air and washed over his face and mouth in smoky tendrils.

As his hand roved over the door, searching frantically for the lock, he noticed that something in the depths of the room was stirring the gas. He wanted to cry out, hoping it was Sherlock, but he kept his mouth clamped firmly shut, for fear of letting the mist in.

He had just found the switch, when the last of his air had escaped, and he felt that he _must_ breathe fresh air, or he'd die. He leapt into the open hallway; gasping and filling his shriveled lungs with bountiful sweet oxygen, and instantly plunged himself back into the window, against the shards of glass, grabbing the lock and twisting it.

John glanced at where he thought Sherlock was, hoping for some positive signs of life. The flashing lights were making him dizzy, and the siren made his racing heart leap into his chest.

A third silhouette, this one huge and hulking, was staggering through the smoke. It laboriously stumbled to where the two men had fallen and collapsed to its knees.

Instantly John thought, as a doctor, that this person was succumbing to the effects of the gas. He wanted to call out to it, but resolutely held his breath.

Amazingly, the silhouette picked up what looked to be a bundle of clothes off the floor where Moriarty and Sherlock had fallen. The gas was beginning to clear, and John could just make out the muscular, bare arms wrapped around the linen.

"Hey!" John hazarded a cry.

The figure in the mist glanced up, peering through a break in the clouds and John could barely make out a mop of blond hair and the drooping, cynical lids that momentarily hid striking, cruel eyes.

For a moment, their gazes locked, as Sebastian Moran and John Watson sized each other up, ignoring the angry red glare of the alarm, or the piercing wail of the sirens.

Then, Moran started to run into the mist, presumably to make his escape with whatever the bundle held through the second door of the lab.

John opened his door, brushing a few shards of glass off of his coat, and what was left of the mist washed over him in one mighty surge.

He held his breath, but the alarm was making him dizzy, he ran to the last bundle on the floor and, with caution and a sinking horror, he unraveled it.

He whimpered when it slowly dawned on him what was inside, but echoing voices had begun to emerge from the hallway from which he'd arrived in. He followed Moran's path, hoping to bump into him and make some kind of trade, hoping that Sherlock hadn't been his target all along.

Outside the lab he only found fresh tire marks scorched into the pavement.

He didn't know what to do, holding the sleeping infant criminal, so he'd ran home, terrified of Moriarty's men suddenly seizing upon him, terrified for Sherlock alone with Moran, and honestly worried that he'd just suffered from a nervous breakdown and was imagining the whole thing.


	15. Truce

"I thought I'd finally snapped." Sebastian echoed his thoughts perfectly.

"I mean, this isn't the _strangest_ thing that I've ever done, but it's the closest to pulp fiction."

"I know what you mean." John said, staring at Sherlock absently. "Things like this just don't _happen_. They're not _possible_."

Sebastian leaned forward, studying his temporary ally, and then gazing back to his temporary boss, with red sauce smeared grotesquely all around his mouth.

"Maybe I'm dreaming." He wondered aloud.

John slid off his chair and attacked Sherlock's face with a napkin, rubbing the sauce off vigorously.

"I suppose that all depends." John said while he worked. "Is his the kind of thing you're prone to dream of?"

"Right. Maybe you're dreaming." He retorted.

John found a new napkin, and moved on to Jim, who had begun to lick his cheeks in an attempt to get the sauce off. He screamed with anger when John stole his tasty face-paint with his napkin.

Sebastian clasped his hands together and perched his elbows on his knees. He did this whenever he was thinking hard about something which he knew he would eventually have to give up on understanding, and usually when Jim talked to him.

"Listen, dreaming or no…"

John looked up to Sebastian, his eyes reflecting the same tired, haggard look. The look which said: I-don't-know-what's-going-on-but-I-want-out-please! Sebastian had seen it in himself on occasion when he found himself in rare proximity of a mirror. The look which also, at the same time asked anyone in eye-sight: There is no way out, is there?

"Dreaming or no," Sebastian repeated, "The only thing we know for sure is that slimy Dr. Genil knows a lot more than he's willing to give. The only hope we've got is in tracking him down and making him tell us all he can about changing them back? Yeah?"

John looked down at Sherlock, who had abandoned his meal and was leaning against the couch, snoozing lightly, his head rocking back and forth and his heavy lids shuddering over his eyes, like curtains that refused to swing all the way closed.

"Yeah."

"Well, I've got all of Jim's 'connections' on my phone. You've got Sherlock's methods in your head, maybe we're not super geniuses, but we might be able to at least find this one man, right?"

To John, it sounded more like Sebastian was asking for assurance than asking his opinion. He nodded anyway.

"Look, mate; you've got no reason to trust me, and I've got a pretty fair claim on not trusting you; but maybe we could, I don't know… call it a truce until we've got our bosses back, yeah?"

John was watching Sherlock, whose eyes had shut and hadn't reopened. He was thinking calmly and rationally.

"Trust the man who has tried to kill you not once, but many times?" he mocked himself silently. "Sounds perfectly reasonable!"

"Look at him! He's really shaken; he just wants to figure out what's happening just as much as you do."

"What does he care? He just wants his paycheck. He's a killer for hire, it's what he does."

"He's been sitting opposite you for an hour and hasn't made a lunge for his gun. You left him alone with Sherlock for ten minutes. He'll be fine."

"Well, what do you think?" It was Sebastian talking now.

John met his eyes and gauged the sincerity in them. He found that he wasn't certain what he thought. To trust or not to trust? The wrong choice could kill him. But if he was too harsh now, Sherlock might be a toddler forever.

"Okay." John finally muttered. "But we do this legally if we can."

"Always." Sebastian added, his gaze sliding over John and settling on Jim, who had rested his head on the table and hadn't moved again.

John followed his gaze.

"Tomorrow maybe?"

"Yeah."


	16. Bananahiru mama!

**Tomorrow I should get my USB back, so I can start uploading other stories again on Monday. Childish was the last story I put on my Doc Manager, so it's the only one I've been able to update thus far. Now I'll be able to upload my ecclectic stories again. Anticipate Monday, you wondrous readers, you.**

* * *

Sebastian stared at Jim for a few more seconds, but made no move towards him. For several seconds, he was silent, but looked as though he wanted to say something.

John watched his mouth gaping open, and shut, like a fish.

"Problem?" he asked.

"Nah," Sebastian quickly replied. Too quickly.

"It's just…" He seemed to be choking on the words trying to form in his mouth, swallowing them back, only to belch them up insecurely.

"What do I… what do I _do?" _He finally managed to croak. "I mean, he's a kid… what do I do with a kid?"

"Well, you feed it when it's hungry, you don't leave it alone for too long, and you treat it gently." John said, startled by the human side of Moran suddenly oozing out.

"But...!" Sebastian blustered, attempting to yell, glancing at Jim, sleeping in the crook of his elbow with his head on the table, and then suddenly began whispering again.

"You see me… You see what I am." He gestured down to himself, over his ratty jeans dusty with gunpowder and sleeveless shirt with the mysterious maroon stains.

He quickly added "And I'm not saying that's _all _I am, but it's a good bit of it."

He stood up and sighed, running one hand through his greasy blond hair. "I mean… a kid changes everything. I can't work with a kid; I mean, I work for the kid, but clearly that's on standby…"

Sebastian glanced at John, and then turned his head to the floor, like he'd been scalded by what he'd seen.

"What if something _happens_? If it gets hurt, or killed? What do I do then?"

The impulse was strong in John to say "_What do you normally do"_ but he held it back in favor of some real advice.

"You won't let anything happen to him, will you?"

He paused, and waited for some justification. Sebastian glanced up and looked at him as though he'd suddenly grown an extra head.

"You don't quite get my line of work—"

"No, I think I do get it." John hurriedly interrupted him. "You kill with killers and kill killers in order to keep from being killed, and since you're alive, you're evidently good at it."

John pointed at the sleeping Jim. "He certainly seemed to think so. He had faith in you, more than you seem to have in yourself."

Sebastian shook his head. "No, you don't get it. I relied on him to keep me off people's radar, on the DL as it were. Without him I'm up in the air."

John pointed again at the sleeping child, who had begun to mutter darkly in his sleep. "That was then, now he needs you more than ever. You can't screw this up."

"I won't." Sebastian rested his head in his hand. He thought about his nice cool bed at home; how it would feel to clamber in between the covers and let the day melt away; under covers where the world, no matter how inexplicable, made sense again.

"I…" he started, but stopped.

He tried again. "I…"

He didn't like the way his voice seemed to come out. It sounded like he was crying. His throat was just tight. Crying was for sissys.

"I think we should go. I'll be in touch when I learn anything."

"I don't know how to contact you." John said.

"Don't worry." Sebastian finished.

"Banarahiru mama!" Sherlock exclaimed, suddenly bolting upright from where he'd been leaning against the couch under the guise of being asleep.

Jim started awake, his head still resting on the table, but his limbs writhing.

"Banarahiru?" he asked sleepily.

"Mama!" Sherlock said jumping up and down.

Jim looked up; disturbed, but curious. "How?" he said. It seemed to be the only adult word he knew.

Sherlock raced over to the door of the flat and with one majestic leap he clutched the door handle…

…and immediately slid off.

Jim heaved himself up from his sitting position and joined Sherlock, standing by his side, in observing the door. Perhaps if they stared at it hard enough, it would open.

The two adults watched this startling development in a detached fashion. The seriousness of their argument seemed to have been interrupted by the light merriment of the two tots, and the transition was welcome, though wrenching.

"I suppose we should see what they want." John said quietly, feeling a bit absurd.

"You don't suppose they're like dogs, sensing danger." Sebastian wondered aloud.

"I would think that they would run away from Dr. Genil if they could sense him, not towards him." John said.

"You don't know Jim." Sebastian groaned, scooping up said toddler and balancing him on his hip.

"No, but I deal with children for a living. If there's a doctor nearby, a child will be repelled. It's like a magnet really." He said opening the door and letting Sherlock walk out. The two-year-old ran straight for the stairs and began the slow descent down.

John foresaw danger and picked up the squirming child.

Sherlock immediately wanted down to descend the stairs himself, but John kept a firm grasp on him as he writhed and twisted in his arms.

Sherlock pointed down stairs, and, regaining his masterful glare and method of demanding things, he sternly said. "Uhhn!" which sounded something like 'down.'

"Alright." John said as he descended the stairs carrying his flat mate cautiously. Sebastian followed a few steps behind, with Jim, who was as compliant as a kitten in his arms.


	17. Chocolate Chip Biscuits…?

Sherlock allowed John to carry him down stairs, but he absolutely refused to be carried any further and at the foot of the stairs he squealed painfully and pushed John away.

John thought he had hurt Sherlock and hurried to set him down, but as soon as Sherlock's bare feet touched the floor he ran off, down the hall to Mrs. Hudson's flat where his progress was halted, once again, by a shut door.

He turned and glared icily at John, practically barking orders to open the door. The affect was less impressive than it might have been when Sherlock was a domineering man.

John made his own time in opening the door to Mrs. Hudson's flat, which she kept unlocked while she was away in case they needed to go into in her flat for something.

Sherlock leapt into the darkness blindly, not bothering to discover that he was too small to reach the light switch as well. John felt accommodating, and was naturally curious as to what Sherlock was doing, so he flipped Mrs. Hudson's switch for him.

Sherlock stood, perfectly frozen, in the center of the kitchen, gazing up at Mrs. Hudson's cupboard where she kept her snacks and perishables.

"Look, we should probably go…" Sebastian said.

Jim, although deficient in speaking English seemed to have no trouble in understanding it, for he suddenly began to wail and cry into Sebastian's shoulder, kicking his stomach fiercely with a few short jabs.

Sebastian, startled, frightened, and already doubtful of his abilities to take care of any small creature immediately dropped Jim, as gently and as quickly as he could, onto the floor.

Instantly, the crocodile tears stopped; Jim sighed, gratified and joined Sherlock by the cupboard, where he was currently trying to climb the cabinets.

John scooped up Sherlock and placed him on the counter. He didn't know what his flat mate was after, but if the two child-geniuses were both in agreement of wanting it, it might be some kind of cure for their condition.

Sherlock stood up, reaching for the top cabinet. John reached over him and opened it, revealing the crackers, biscuits and cereals within.

John picked Sherlock up and raised him into the cupboard. Sherlock dug through the cardboard and plastic jungle, pushing things over, picking them up, and occasionally pulling them out of the cupboard where they would fall, like awkward hail, sometimes near where Jim was watching.

Finally, Sherlock exclaimed "A-ha!" and seized upon the prize which he so desperately had sought.

"Fox's Chocolate Chip Biscuits…?" John read the label with some measure of disappointment. He was hoping for something more…Sherlock; some grand discovery, not a child's natural sweet tooth.

Jim was hopping up and down like he'd won a lottery chanting "mamamamamama!"

Sherlock held up the package in triumph, eyes glistening.

John set him down and took the package from him, reasoning that Mrs. Hudson wouldn't mind sharing only two.

"Jim and sugar sounds like a bad idea." Sebastian said, thinking, honestly about his boss's natural reaction to sugar. He didn't want to imagine how bad he would be as a kid.

"Just one." John said tearing the package. He pulled out two cookies and handed one to each child, who eagerly shoveled it into their mouths, eyeing each other in evident glee.

"We really should be going." Sebastian said.

"Yeah." John said again. It was all he could think of.

Sherlock licked the crumbs off his hands and watched somberly as Jim, still covered in crumbs and spittle was hoisted into the air. Contrary to Sebastian's prediction, the cookie seemed to put Jim right to sleep, for he was dead weight in Sebastian's arms.

"Good night." John said, picking up his own friend, marveling at how he was getting used to hoisting the unfamiliar weight.

"Good night." Sebastian echoed stepping outside Mrs. Hudson's flat. He paused before opening the front door. Once he stepped outside the flat, once he was out in the open on Baker Street, he couldn't rely on John Watson's help anymore. Jim was his burden, his responsibility, his to protect.

Sebastian rested his chin on Jim's soft head and reached out with his free hand for the door knob. It had all the chilling bite of ice. He realized that it would be freezing outside. He would have to run to the car with the child. He should have gone out and started the car sooner, so that it would be warm for them.

It was too late for second thoughts as Sebastian clutched the handle and stepped blindly onto the open street, humming with the roar of midnight traffic on some other road.

John heard the front door shut from within Mrs. Hudson's flat. Trusting Sebastian Moran seemed dangerous to say the least, but it could be the only way to get the old Sherlock back.

Besides that, he had the curious gut sensation that Sebastian was in the same situation as himself. That made the trusting a bit more bearable.

Sherlock leaned into John's shoulder. John noted his warmth, a few degrees above his own.

"Ah, right." He mused rocking Sherlock slightly. "Babies have a higher temperature than adults."

He stepped into the hall, making sure that Moran was, indeed, gone. There was no sign of him.

He stepped onto the foot of the stairs and peered up to his flat. It was totally still and silent.

He stepped up the seventeen steps to the flat, stepping over the floor board that creaked.

Sherlock sensed the change in pacing and murmured slightly. "Jam."

"Shhh, shhhh…" John assured him quietly. "It's alright, go back to sleep."

Sherlock's head lolled back to the shoulder he'd become comfortable in.

He stepped into the flat. Only the kitchen and light and the dull lamp in the living room remained on. Quietly, he flipped them off.

He stepped into Sherlock's room; the dark, dusty, dank, soulless room that had seldom found use in all their years at 221b. He felt a draft peel across his face and shivered.

John paused, considering the sleeping child with the weight of his arm. Silently, he walked out of Sherlock's room and started up the stairs to his bedroom, the room with all of his light, that was cleaned regularly, that had been a refuge to him through all of life's challenges. The warmth of his bed beckoned, but he was determined not to answer the call.

He strode purposefully to his bed and gingerly lifted Sherlock off his shoulder, peeling back the sheets and revealing the plush pillows underneath. He gently laid Sherlock into the folds of each silken pillow, which he nestled his head into gratefully, letting the wild black curls billow out, like so many branches of an aquatic plant.

"Good night Sherlock." John whispered tenderly, pulling up the covers and reaching out to brush the child's hair out of his sleeping face. "Tomorrow will be better. I'll figure out what's happened to you and fix it, I promise."

With that John stood up, hugging himself and rubbing his elbows for warmth. Without Sherlock a cold patch had appeared in his jumper, and the bitter night wind seemed to leap through the window and make grabs at him.


	18. All Grown Up

John slept down stairs that night. On the sofa, so that if Sherlock ever cried out, or needed him, he could be there in less than a minute. The sofa wasn't terribly comfortable, so he awoke at the first blare of a car horn in the early morning just before sunrise with a terrible crick in his neck.

He stretched, yawned, and then brewed himself a cuppa, in that order. He was just sitting down to sip his steaming tea, which he had accidently brewed a bit too strong and too hot for his liking when a loud crash alerted him to Sherlock, whom he had temporarily forgotten about in the haze of the morning.

As soon as he heard the crash, he deduced two things: one, if Sherlock is child sized, that crash is too large to belong to a child. Two, the only two people who know about Sherlock's condition are Sebastian Moran and Dr. Genil, both of whom we don't want alone with Sherlock.

John leapt to his feet, throwing his scalding cuppa onto the floor and running up the stairs to his bedroom, skipping three steps at a time.

He paused, shocked to the core when he heard a very deep, masculine, and familiar voice booming his name.

"John?"

"Sherlock?" John echoed hollowly. He threw open the door and his haw dropped in awe.

Sherlock, every inch an adult, was lying on the floor, wrapped in his bed sheet like a tunic and struggling to stand up.

As soon as Sherlock made eye contact with the startled John, he assaulted him with a barrage of questions.

"What happened? Where's Moriarty? Where's Genil? What am I doing in your _bed_? Where are my clothes?" Sherlock spat the last two questions as he gathered up the sheet, covering himself as best he could and attempting to storm out of the room with some ounce of dignity.

"You…" John was at a loss for words. All of Sherlock's questions were very valid questions, and yet his mind seemed to be suffering from some sort of paper jam. He knew what he wanted to say, but was having difficulties in getting his mouth to understand how to say it.

"You… you don't remember last night? At all?" John finally managed to squeeze through his mental block.

"Yes!" Sherlock declared. "No… wait… no." he marched into his room, where his clothes were, and continued interrogating John behind the closed door.

"The last thing I remember is seeing Moriarty and reaching for the gas mask. Was there some kind of leak?"

John heard the sound of coat hangers being pushed aside in Sherlock's closet and tried to think. How much would Sherlock believe? Should he just tell the truth? Did he really believe it himself?

"Um, yeah. Some kind of gas leaked from the vents. I saw you fighting Moriarty over the mask, but it looked like you both suffered from inhalation of some kind. Sorry Sherlock, Moriarty's sniper…"

"Moran?" Sherlock asked; his voice slightly muffled through the wood.

"Yeah, I think that's the one… he helped Moriarty get away, it was all I could do to get you home."

"Just as well, you should try and avoid that sniper. Sebastian Moran has killed so many times; he doesn't have a gun barrel long enough to tally the notches."

John shuddered, remembering his promise of trust the night before.

"And besides that, it's all well and good, but where are my clothes?"

"Um, I was worried that the fumes would have leaked into your clothes so I took them off while you were sleeping."

"And you didn't bother to replace them?"

To this, John had no answer. Where did Sherlock's clothes go? He was wearing children's clothing when he went to bed, they should be a lot tighter, but they should still be there.

"And why didn't you put me in _my_ bed? John, is there something you're not telling me?"

John thought for a moment, trying to reason out another lie, finally he settled on the truth.

"Yes." He said blandly.

"What?" Sherlock demanded, opening the door and revealing himself in one of his grey suits. John couldn't meet his eyes, and instead turned on his heels and went up to his room. On his way he passed the living room where two bowls were still sitting on the table, filed with a crusty red sauce from canned ravioli.

"Ah…" he thought. "_Proof_."

He went to his room, feeling Sherlock's eyes on the back of his neck. God only knows what his flat mate thought about him just then, but John had confidence that Sherlock wouldn't think he'd ever hurt him. That was the only thing, he thought, that would keep Sherlock from running out of the flat.

John leaned over the bed, now stripped of its thin sheet, with pillows exploded all over the floor from where Sherlock must have kicked them in his flurry.

John reached out and picked up purple and black shreds of cloth, the same color as Sherlock's baby clothes. The fabric had been torn in such a fashion as to suggest that something had exploded within its confines.

Suddenly it all made sense to John. Sherlock had simply grown up overnight. Considering how quickly he'd shrunk it was not an impossible suggestion, merely highly improbable.

True, it was odd that Sherlock didn't remember anything, but in all fairness John couldn't remember anything from when he was two either.

He laughed; a manic, crazy sound, and picked all the bits of children's clothing off of his bed and tucked them into a drawer. He would need proof of his sanity later, and those were the only tangible pieces of evidence.

"What aren't you telling me John?" Sherlock had stormed back up to his room and gripped the door frame with his white-knuckled hands.

"How about some breakfast? I know a great pancake recipe. It uses cola." John answered urbanely.

"John, this is serious!"

"I know." John answered. "I'm always serious about pancakes."

John walked past Sherlock, who stood outside the room for a long moment, staring bitterly at his flat mate.

"Have I done something to upset you? Is this some form of… _punishment_?" He remarked painfully.

"No, God no." John said, stepping over the shattered fragments of his teacup.

"Then why won't you tell me?" Sherlock pressed.

John, seeing his one chance, seized it, smiling briefly.

"Because I don't have enough data. Can't report facts without data."

"Oh, come on John!" Sherlock wailed, but John had pulled out the pancake mix, and refused to speak about anything save breakfast.

"Did Moriarty threaten you to stay quiet? Because you can confide in me John."

"The secret to light and fluffy omelets is to use Ricotta Cheese, it also brings out the flavors in the peppers."

"Have you…taken advantage of me while I was incapacitated?"

"Harry would never eat a pancake without syrup, but I personally like it with apricot jam. It's light and sweet. Tastes like sunshine."

"I could deduce next week's lottery numbers for you?"

"Hah!"

"Damn."

John finished eating, and noted that slowly, Sherlock was clearing his plate. He decided that his recent growth spurt had depleted his vitamin supplies, which were scarce in the first place.

"Please John." Sherlock muttered into his eggs. "Please, tell me what you know."

_"Oh, Sherlock. If I told you what had actually happened, you would ship me off to an asylum._" John thought.

He took a deep breath in, his resolve wavering, and said. "Now, for me, a morning isn't a morning without bacon."

"John!" Sherlock was in despair. "If you don't tell me, I'll hold my breath until you do."

John snickered, "What are you, two? Don't do that it kills brain cells."

"All the more reason for you to tell me."

"You'll just end up passing out, and my problems, at least, will be solved."

"Don't be childish, we're both grown men! We can tell each other these things!"

"Well, when I'm dealing with a child…! Are you holding your breath? Seriously?"

John left the flat later, without telling Sherlock anything. He felt disloyal, but with a somber hope that if they continued to research Dr. Genil, he would eventually have enough evidence to show Sherlock what had happened, and enough evidence to have him believed.

He passed the sub shop and received a text. He could guess who it was.


	19. Texts and the Truth

**I got my USB back! Good thing too, because this was the last chapter I had saved... On Monday I'll beging updateing Jim's Cat tales and ecedera, but don't worry, Ch 2 of Childish will be right behind! :D**

* * *

He passed the sub shop and received a text. He could guess who it was.

Unknown:

**Jim grew up overnight. He's back to normal, except he doesn't remember anything. You? –SM**

John Watson:

**Sherlock's back to normal too. What've you told Jim? –JW **

Unknown:

**The truth. He thought I was kidding. You?—SM**

John Watson:

**Almost nothing. He wouldn't believe me anyway. –JW**

Unknown:

**Did any of it really happen? –SM**

John Watson:

**I have two dirty bowls and the remains of Sherlock's baby clothes as a testimonial to our sanity. –JW**

Unknown:

**I suppose our truce is up? –SM**

John Watson:

**Depends. Are you hiding in the building across the street with your rifle? –JW**

Unknown:

**Very funny. –SM**

John Watson:

**Keep the truce in mind though; I have a feeling that we haven't seen the last of Dr. Genil. –JW**

Unknown:

**I hope I don't kill you before then. –SM **

John Watson:

**That's right. Just think positive. –JW **

Unknown:

**If Sherlock ever turns into a kid again, you can count on me to give you as much moral support as you gave me :) –SM **

Unknown:

**But don't count on seeing Dr. Genil again, Jim's vowing for blood. That and vengeance. It doesn't look good.**

John Watson:

**Good luck.**

Unknown:

**Nice Jumper.**

John looked around panicked. Every window became a shadowy mirror hiding a steel barrel. He received another text.

Unknown:

**Just kidding. I can't see you.**

John sighed and smiled. Today, he was alive, and the world largely made sense. The street smelled like fast food and car fumes, but beneath the usual breath of London was a breeze of clean, crisp winter air.

End Chapter 1

* * *

**Let not your hearts be troubled, there is still more to come. Like, whatever happened to Dr. Genil?**


	20. The Belly of the Beast

**Rejoice! The long awaited (for me at least) second chapter: Turning Tables. I don't know how many chapters there are actually going to be, so this feels like taking the first few steps out of my Hobbit hole and into an adventure for me. I hope you all will continue reading with as much love as you did before, and that if you keep reading you keep reviewing, because otherwise I won't know. :D**

* * *

Jim Moriarty locked his apartment door with a satisfying metallic click. He'd been staying in a seedy complex for a few weeks now, longer than he normally would have under normal circumstances.

He strode through his tidy living room and dropped the struggling infant that he'd been carrying under his arm like a parcel onto the couch. The toddler rolled over onto his hands and knees and cringed at the mistreatment, tears still leaking slowly from his cobalt eyes, weeping silently and too scared to sob.

Clearly these were not normal circumstances.

Like a frightened puppy retreating to a corner for protection, the childish form of John Watson clamored silently over the plush blue cushions and curled into the corner of the sofa, his bare knees bolstering themselves against his chest and creating a wall between him and his captor.

Jim opened his laptop with a snap, disregarding his prisoner for the moment and with a few timely clicks he opened his video feed for the street camera just outside of Baker Street. He checked the loop for the past hour and found that in the last few minutes Sherlock Holmes; the great, dark shadow of a man, had rushed into his flat carrying something heavy in his arms.

Something heavy and child-sized.

With a snarl of disgust Jim took a furious swipe at a lonely coffee mug sitting innocuously on his desk and sent it shattering against the wall in a burst of ceramic and white dust, tearing a string of bitter curses from his lips as a parting farewell.


	21. Crying and Thinking

**Jim is evil. Only evil people yell at weeping children. Take note. P.S: Thanks to the person who reviewed first on the last chapter, I Loled in the library, loud enough to bother the librarians. It was the best part of a terrible day, though!**

* * *

John cried harder, his breath coming in heavy sobs and shrieks as he fought the hot tears trickling down his face. His knotted fists were already raised in a preemptive self-defense position.

Jim spun on him in a fit of rage, leaning over his cowering form and snarling into his face "Shut up!"

John wept bitterly, only daring to breathe when he felt he could make no noise; and even then his breathe became a sob that was wrenched out of him through necessity. He pressed his face into his hands which were hidden in the enormous sleeves of his favorite beige jumper. It was the only clothing he had and he wore it like an ill-fitting dress.

Jim sighed deeply and eased off the crying child, leaving him to his world of misery so that he himself could embark on a swift trip to contemplation-land where he could maybe make some sense of the curious night's affairs.

He had known from the start that Dr. Genil had been working on a serum that caused a unique disturbance in an organism's Meiosis. So far so obvious.

John hiccupped. Jim shot him a withering glance. The toddler cowered, burying his face in the crook of his elbows and all but disappearing into his jumper. A soft moan emerged from the folds of cotton.

Jim paced nervously across the flat, stalking past the couch, into the tiled area he'd appointed to be his kitchen, turning sharply on his heel, then pacing back across the hardwood onto the rug and past the couch again. He kept his head low and watched each passing floor, counting them off as they appeared.

Every now and again he would snap his attention to John, who would either be crying into his arms, or would be staring at him, and immediately hide his face when they met eye-to-eye.

Dr. Genil could turn adults into toddlers; Sebastian had told him as much. Did he believe it before now? Not at all.

But gazing at the boy crying on his sofa, Jim found it difficult _not_ to believe. In fact, what could be more natural? If it wasn't a toddler-version of John on his sofa, then surely it must have been John's son, or close relative. The likeness was uncanny, it was unnerving, but most of all it was unmistakable.

Jim eased himself onto the sofa beside John's trembling figure and continued to observe him mutely. He made a list of the things he knew, and he repeated them to himself very calmly and clearly, just in case he was truly as insane as he felt.

One, the boy sitting next to him was _the_ John Watson.

Two, Dr. Genil can turn adults into children.

Three, turning adults into children is possible. (That one was important not to exclude)

Four; and at this realization he curled his flexed hand into a white-knuckled fist: Sherlock Holmes was currently in possession of his sniper, Sebastian Moran.

After organizing his thoughts thus, he next had to decide what to do. That didn't take long, since he had a job for his sniper the next morning, and no plans for the use of John as of yet. He picked up his phone and dialed Sherlock Holmes' number.


	22. Twenty Minutes

**I'm not sure why this chapter is in script format. Maybe because so little was going on outside of a phone conversation, it didn't really matter if I added it or not. :) As always, tell me what you think and I'll process it accordingly.**

**P.S: Happy Birthday Douglas Adams! Google is imortalizing him right now with an amazing interactive doodle. Consequently I was a little distracted while updating. If you have to waste time today, waste time playing with the Google doodle? M'Kay? 42!**

* * *

Sherlock: I figured you might want this back.

Jim: That's a fine way to say _Hello_. I could almost say the same thing to you.

Sherlock: In fact you could. (sound of smashing glass)

Jim: In fact I do.

Sherlock: Baker Street, twenty minutes.

Jim: And if I don't?

Sherlock: Your sniper is currently… (Sound of smashing glass and falling furniture) Hang on.

(Long pause, sound of footsteps followed by a brief, joyful squeal. A door slams shut and Sherlock returns to the phone.)

Sherlock: Your _toddler_ is trying to kill himself. I left him alone for two minutes and he drank the experiment from my beaker. To be perfectly fair, if you don't get here by that time I won't be responsible for what happens to him. (As Sherlock speaks, the sound of a door rattling gets louder and louder.) Shut up!

Jim: I was nice to yours Sherlock!

Sherlock: John's a good boy. Yours needs medication. (Sebastian kicks the door.) Shut up!

Jim: Touché. Have a kettle ready.

Sherlock: Yours broke my kettle.

Jim: You're exaggerating.

Sherlock: I'm really not. (Bang bang…)

Jim: Than maybe I'll just keep the one I've got.

Sherlock: Oh, come now. The only reason you'd call is if you needed your precious sniper for something. I suspect a hit tomorrow?

Jim: Maybe. Maybe it doesn't matter since I don't know how to turn him back into a grown up.

Sherlock: Maybe the effects wear off over time.

Jim: Maybe.

(Pause, punctuated only by the sound of kicking at the door on Sherlock's end)

Jim: Twenty minutes.

_Hangs up._


	23. Forget

**Don't just ****_look_**** at him Jim! Help him! Gosh...** _**Men**! _

* * *

John still shook from the effort of his crying, but he had at least stopped making sniveling little noises. That much, Jim was thankful for.

Jim reached out tentatively, feeling as though he were in some twisted dream, with limited control over his actions. He wanted to study this _phenomenon_. A man turned into a boy. He wanted to see it, to note every little detail, and to keep it stored away in his precious memories.

He lightly brushed the top of John's strawberry blond hair with the tips of his fingers. It was smooth and golden and he pushed it around curiously. Not unkindly.

John began to move and Jim retracted his hand as though it has been scalded. John peeked at Jim, who held his hand up and rubbed his fingertips together like one might if he realized he'd been touching something disgusting.

For several breathless seconds all Jim could see of John were two blue gems hovering over thick beige fur. Then, cautiously, John revealed his face. It was red from crying and shiny from the tears and the sweat of being pressed into the jumper. His nose needed attention, as faint crests of green began to emerge from each nostril.

It occurred to Jim that he would be the one who would eventually have to wipe the child's nose, but the merest notion of touching it repulsed him to nausea.

Jim began to tally the similarities he noticed immediately: The shape of the skull, the color of the eyes and hair, the curious crests around the eyes; but he also noticed things he couldn't account for, such as a curious purplish formation flushing beneath one eye, or a light dusting of freckles near the bridge of his nose.

John's mouth began to move automatonically, forming words and working his jaw, but no sound was made.

Jim, too bored to wonder what it could be that John wanted to say, noticed instead that John's mouth was surprisingly red. As he struggled to give life to words, John's lower lip trembled slightly and was red, red as a cut cherry against his milk-white skin.

"Forget." John managed to string together that one word, then whimpered and began to weep again. Jim couldn't tell if he had consciously formed the word "forget," or if it was some lucky coincidence of baby talk.

Forget? Forget what?


	24. Judgement Day

Jim snarled in disgust as John continued his bawling. There was little he found more pathetic and hateful than a crying child. He stood up and brushed away some imaginary pathogens from his coat and edged his way into the kitchen wearily.

"Look. I don't like you, and it's pretty clear that you don't like me…" He said groping through his pantry blindly.

"But if you will just stop your feral animal noises long enough for me to take you home, I'll let you have this biscuit." He grabbed the box of biscuits from behind and held it up for John to see.

John made a soft squealing noise that Jim couldn't decipher as being happy or unhappy. It didn't matter at that particular moment since Jim's attention was directed to a knocking on the door.

"Good God, what now?" Jim asked in a breathless snarl. He imagined the big-man himself, an ancient wrinkled man clad in a long white bathrobe with a majestic white beard, knocking on his door, answering it and having a deep booming voice proclaim: "Judgment day: sign here please."

The fantasy at least made him smile.

* * *

**Are you there God? It's me: StArBarD. Listen, if you'll just give me a few more reviews I promise I'll be nicer to my sister...**


	25. Loser

**I do not endorse the use of illicit substances. Just because it has apeared in a story I worte does not mean it's okay. Stay above the influence. That should settle my liability.**

* * *

With practiced caution, Jim peered through the peephole of his door, standing on his toes to do so. He groaned softly when he beheld the dirty rainbow-colored ski-cap, raggedy denim jacket and pale face of his friendly neighbor, Loser the User.

He opened the door a crack, hoping to hide the infant within, and produced from some yet-unknown chasm of patience his most winning, and least threatening smile.

"Louise, what can I do for you?" He grinned.

"I heard a kid." Louise (Lose or Loser to her friends) said quickly, wiping her bright pink nose with one finger and spastically trying to glance inside Jim's apartment.

Jim looked her up and down, scanning her minutely, though such attention wasn't really needed. Her skin was as pale as that of a corpse (he should know), but her eyes were flushed red, pupils mere pinpricks in the green soup of her eyes. She was as jittery as a cat with ADHD and seemed to be rocking, dancing, and trying to stand on her toes at the same time. She would try to look over his shoulder, and then get distracted by the moth crashing into the light down the hall with a sickening thud.

"Louise…have you been using again?" The audacity of his question shocked even him, however it sounded common enough.

Louise gave him a pitying look, which seemed to say "Poor man, there's jelly in his brain."

What she actually said was "Well I heard a kid crying and I followed it to your door and I knew you didn't have a kid so I asked myself 'What could Jim be doing with a kid' but I couldn't think o'nothin so I decided to ask you myself. Here I am."

She said it all in one breath, and all as part of one complete stream of words. Jim rolled his eyes and pulled up a lie that he thought would convince the girl. Although at that point, he thought, telling her he'd conjured the kid out of thin air might've convinced the girl.

"He's my nephew. I'm watching him for my brother."

"Why's he crying?"

Jim twitched, hoping to avoid being interrogated at his door. He _did_ have an appointment to keep.

"I don't know. Maybe he's hungry?"

"I could come in and have a look see. I'm really good with kids, you see my sister—" Loser tried to step past Jim, but he held firm. The last time the girl had been in his house he'd lost a few pieces of silverware and an expensive paperweight that went into fuelling the girl's drug habits. Tonight he wasn't feeling so charitable.

"That's fine. As you can hear, he's stopped." Jim said sweetly, hoping the girl caught the hint that his sweet voice was just another disguise for his _I'm-going-to-kill-you_ voice. "Goodbye."

He made to shut the door, but found in obstinately blocked by one of Loser's ratty black boots.

"I didn't know you had a brother."

Jim worked to keep his face straight. "That's right. Colonel James Moriarty."

"Colonel? What regiment?"

"Supplies."

"I thought _your_ name was James?"

"No. It's Jim. Totally different. Now…" Jim opened the door a crack and made to slam it on her foot. Hard. She slid her boot out of the way just in the nick of time as the door closed with a titanic crash that shook the entire wall and made the knick-knacks on his book shelves rattle. "Good night."


	26. Little Bunny

Jim slicked his hair back angrily. Clearly this was his night for kindness, though nobody told him. He spun on his heels to pretend to talk to John like his nephew, just in case Loser was listening through the door, and found to his utter shock (and slight relief) that John had vanished.

He stared at the empty couch blankly for several seconds, as though the toddler would reappear, slipping of a magic ring or throwing away an invisibility cloak. He shook his head and stared again, but it became clear that John had simply absconded from the couch.

"Little rabbit." Jim thought bitterly. It was in no way a compliment, as Jim thought of himself as 'the wolf' most of the time.

Jim began the search, scanning his room for even the slightest of hiding places, but his living room was purposefully devoid of small nooks and spaces where assassins or traps could hide. He'd once walked into an apartment he was keeping to find that someone had rigged the floor with pressure points which, when pressed, activated a crossbow-style barrage on his door. Luckily he was faster than he looked.

"One two three…" Jim sang crouched low, hunting around his shelves for books and boxes that had been moved. "Here comes me… four five six… enough of tricks!"

He stood up and glanced around for anything out of place, still half-singing his eerie song, when he noticed the box of biscuits was not on the counter. It had been knocked onto the floor, and raided.

"Seven eight nine!" He exclaimed, the song gone from his tone. "That was mine!"

He turned himself towards his bedroom, and found that the door that he had left ajar was now shut. First mistake.

He checked the time on his phone. Less than ten minutes left till his appointment at Baker Street.

On the tips of his toes, Jim slunk to his door silently, wishing very much to scare, or at least startle the toddler. He decided he liked John better when he was crying.

He eased upon his door, grappling with the sticky knob in mute horror, realizing that John was in his room with sticky hands making all of his things sticky and spreading his germs on every sticky surface.

Jim pushed the door open silently. Absolutely silently; without even a whisper of sound. He craned his neck and peered into the blackness, making out a shape lying motionlessly on his bed.

Jim flinched. "On my bed." He muttered, imagining the crumbs and snot soaking into his plush cushions, saturating the feathers in his down pillows. He almost had a spasm of horror, but he managed to hold it down.


	27. John

**Jim's action: One of pure utter evil.  
Fan's reaction: One of pure utter disbelief.  
P.S. This should not be replicated in real life ect.**

* * *

He opened the door and switched on the light to behold what looked like a tumor in his blankets. A single, shapeless lump of blankets was piled near one of his pillows, breathing lightly. His own thick comforter was nowhere in sight, though he suspected he might find it on the other side of the bed on the floor.

He grinned wickedly; a smile of malice curling his lips into an unfamiliar shape, spreading into the rest of his face as wrinkles of hate, giving him a demon-like deformity.

"_John."_ The name dribbled out like syrup, crusted over with false sweetness. He called again, lacing that sugary word with as much tenderness as he could muster. He had to lay it on thick if he were to fool a kid.

"_John?"_

A ripple ran the course of the tumor, and it unfolded to reveal a faintly humanoid shape. He had been curled up as tightly as a cat. Now the shape searched for the edge of the blanket as it burrowed around, and peeked its little face out of the dark crease and folds of a blanket like a little bunny peeping out of its hole.

"There you are…little bunny." Jim said as pleasantly as he could.

John's face disappeared again and the tumor writhed itself into a close little nest.

Jim scowled, and then had an idea. He thought himself quite clever as he removed the biscuit from his coat pocket and waved it around for John to see.

"I've got a nice biscuit here for good little boys, but all I can find is one shy bunny." He smirked. His father had always used the old food-bribery technique on him when he was just a kid, and it had always worked, he didn't see why John should be any different.

Besides, no matter how many biscuits one has had, one always has room for another.

John quivered, taken by the offer. The sheet lifted and revealed an eager, hungry face with curiously shiny eyes.

Jim looked to the biscuit, and to the toddler. He thought about the box on the floor of his kitchen and the snot dribbling out of a crying John's nose.

He had another idea which made him feel even cleverer, and made him positively effervescent with evil glee.

With a malicious grin he purposefully raised the biscuit up for John to see, and in a childish display popped it whole into his mouth.

John wailed in confusion, but the biscuit was only the beginning of Jim's show. In a flash Jim reached out and took the blanket, wrenching it out of John's small fists and covering his face, and in two more adept maneuvers he had bundled up the child in the sheet.

In triumph Jim pulled the corners of the blankets together and hoisted his awkward sack up into the air, where he could see John's fists and kicks try to puncture the bag. The toddler made another intelligible squeal, neither happy nor upset and Jim tied the bag like he might've a balloon; tightly.

"There." He said cheerfully. "Now I don't have to touch you."

John let loose another shriek that was much better identified as being one of unhappiness, but Jim ignored him with a few giggles and one stern shake of the sack.


	28. Kidnapper

He carried the thing away from his body, like one might a garbage bag, careful not to let it touch his clothes. He held it aloft throughout the living room, floating it cautiously around the furniture until he reached the door and dropped it onto the floor.

Jim took the doorknob in both hands and silently pulled the door open. With all of his not inconsiderable stealth he peered out into the hallway, checking for Loser, any of her friends who habitually skulked around the building at night, or the rare police man. The wind and the moths were the only companions of his in the darkness.

He looked down to the bag, which had begun to crawl awkwardly away from his feet and scooped it up quietly. John grunted and moaned sorrowfully, but otherwise was dead weight in the sack.

"Good bunny." Jim said, becoming aware that if John thrashed, he would regrettably be forced to drop the bundle, or lose his grip. That could hurt the bunny. A vivid image of the bundle rolling down the rusty steps of his apartment took hold in Jim's mind, to the point where he could hear the screams and the heart wrenching final thud which signaled the end of the bunny.

John was still and silent as Jim trotted downstairs at a lively pace, hoping that he could make it to his car without running into anyone. He was already late as it was, he didn't want to have to try and explain why he appeared to be kidnapping John in a laundry bag.

All he needed to complete the picture of a stereotypical kidnapped was a ski cap, mask, and black jumper. The thought made him sick with irony.


	29. Seatbelts

He paused when he approached the car, and considered whether or not John would ride in the backseat, or the trunk.

If he placed John in the trunk, he wouldn't have to look at him, which was a plus, and he wouldn't have to tangle with his seatbelt or strapping him in, which were two pluses, and he wouldn't have to hear him sniveling about being bundled up in a sack, which almost sealed the deal.

But when Jim thought about how often he was denied the right to drive when he asked for it during work, the pained expressions on his employees faces when he pulled out a set of keys, and the shrieks when he set out to parallel park on a busy street, he thought maybe a seatbelt would be a good thing for a young child to wear.

It also occurred to him to take notes on other people's driving from that point on, in case it became important.

* * *

**P.S. When Jim was Sherlock's taxi driver in the great game, he broke the speed limit, ran a red light, and cut off two cars. Sherlock was too busy to notice.**


	30. Let go!

Jim wrenched open the door of his car and pulled open the bundle, hoping to just pour John into his seat, but the toddler had learnt not to trust the man about anything, and as soon as he saw Jim's face leering over the opening of the bundle, he sprang from where he'd been nearly sleeping lazily, as one might when wrapped in a hammock, and clutched the blanket as tightly as he could, as one might when hanging off a precipice.

"Let go." Jim snarled; annoyed and reconsidering the trunk as a mode of transportation.

"No." John said with surprising clarity.

"I'll bite you." Jim threatened.

"No." John repeated with just as much force.

Jim tried to shake the child from his hold on the blankets, but John merely wrapped his legs in the sheets and refused to give it up with a single mindedness which is only found in the young.

"Fine!" Jim snapped wrapping the blanket around John to the point he felt he could manage a seatbelt.

After a few seconds of fighting, grappling, and otherwise negotiating, Jim had managed to secure the seatbelt around John, and a massive belly of blankets that plumed out in front of him, including his legs and arms somewhere. His eyes peeked over the rim for a moment, watching Jim dolefully, and then buried themselves into the giant pillow of blankets he had unwittingly made.

Before Jim started the lulling hum of the engine, John was already asleep, with his fist in his mouth, folded almost in half in the warm nest of sheets.


	31. Getting There

Jim turned the air-conditioning on high, sending blizzards out of the abused vents. He always liked to drive in the Antarctic cold, and he was partly hoping to make John cry before he made it to Baker Street. Can't have Sherlock thinking he's getting soft now.

With a swift jerk of the wheel Jim kicked up gravel in a tsunami of flying rocks behind his car, and lurched suddenly across the parking lot, where, after a moment's hesitation, he bolted for the main streets, cutting of an SUV by mere millimeters. The driver was so shocked, he forgot to slap his horn and swear, and by the time he got his bearings back enough to try Jim's sleek black monster had already slid off into the night.

In this way, Jim sped to Baker Street: occasionally breaking the speed limit, sometimes cutting off other people and rarely meeting opposition.

Once on Baker Street, still slightly shaken by the near miss he'd had about twenty seconds earlier with a stubborn cab, Jim yanked the steering wheel as hard as he could, sending his wheels screaming as they locked into their grotesque position and his car sliding as its only support froze solid.

It was in this manner that Jim gracefully slid into a perfect parallel with the street just outside of 221b, bumping lightly against the curb.

* * *

**Longer Chapters will come after this one, I promise.**


	32. Shmock

**If you say "Shmock" outloud it sounds like "Smaug". For the record, that was a sheer coincedence.**

* * *

Jim checked his face in the mirror, straightened his suit, brushed back his hair, grimaced and searched his teeth for particles, paused for a deep, soothing breath and smoothly stepped out of his car.

He considered leaving John in the car while he negotiated with Sherlock, but then reconsidered once the remembered he was leaving an expensive car in a so-so neighborhood. Glancing around him, he could already see street vagrants and homeless people congregating. If it weren't for Sherlock he wouldn't know why he ever came to Baker Street. He anxiously awaited the day Sherlock lived up to his bank account and bought a house, preferably somewhere near Pall Mall so that Jim could conduct business while visiting. It was a pain having to stop everything just to say hello to one out-of-his-way consulting detective.

Jim opened the car door and expected John to jump out and attempt to run towards the door, or away from him, or at least jump out of the cold car. Jim could feel gusts of icy breeze on his wrist as the warm December air leaked into the car. John didn't move.

"I didn't kill him did I?" Jim muttered under his breath, searching for a neck, and a pulse in the forest of blanket. He found both, and succeeded in waking up John, who stirred, shivered and whimpered, clutching the sheet tightly, trying to burrow back into the warmth.

"No you don't." Jim said unbuckling the seatbelt and giving himself more room to maneuver. "We're going to see Sherlock. Now."

To his seemingly limitless surprise John didn't fight him as he peeled back layer after layer of blanket, unearthing the toddler after a few minutes of excavation.

"Shmock?" John asked as his bare feet touched the chilled pavement.

"Right." Jim said uncomfortably. "Sherlock." He did not like the way John as suddenly so trusting, nor how his eyes sparkled in the dim light. It put him in mind of an assassin that he had once hired. Once.

"Sharock?" John babbled again, becoming more excited as his toes lost their rosy color.

"Right. Sherlock." Jim held John by the wrist and led him to the door of 221b. It struck him as odd that John seemed to have a memory for Sherlock, but none of his own home, 221b. Was it possible that, as a child, he could remember one, but not the other?


	33. Plink

The door to 221b was open, and Jim cautiously pushed against the wood, hoping to arrive silently. He wouldn't have put it above Sherlock to have his pet Detective Inspector waiting to intercept him in the foyer. It was hot in the flat, probably indicative of a fire somewhere. At the foot of the stairs that led to the flat Jim paused, and wondered.

After a few seconds he led John to one of the railings and put his hand on the rung.

"Now, John. This is very serious. Don't let this railing go anywhere. It'll try to get away if you're not looking. You have to hold tight to it, and don't let go. Understand?" Jim said seriously.

John paused for a moment, and seemed to let the action compute, but after a few seconds he nodded and gripped the rung with both hands in a lopsided hug.

"_Cunning little beggar."_ Jim thought smiling as he ascended the stairs "_He's so stupid it's almost cute._"

Jim quickly, quietly walked up the stairs, pausing only once, in cold fear when the step beneath him groaned massively, clearly giving him away.

There was no movement in the flat above, so Jim continued wearily, the element of surprise gone.

The final door that stood between Sherlock and himself was unlocked, and he pushed it open with only the slightest hesitation. Gaining entrance to the flat had been too easy. If he'd known Sherlock was going to let down _all_ of his defenses he would have sent in a few of his round-the-clock henchmen to round up Sebastian and maybe even Sherlock too. That would teach him to lock his doors. Then again if he'd locked the doors, Jim would have been forced to knock them down. He probably would have blown them up with the small-grade explosives that he kept in the dashboard of his car. That would teach him to lock his doors!

The door seemed to swing open the last few inches on its own, and Jim became aware of a _plink plink_ sound echoing hollowly from near the fireplace.

"_Plink plink…_ Where's John? _Plink" _

Jim gazed at Sherlock, masterfully in command in his chair by the fireplace, precious violin in his lap, stroking the strings with his long fingers elegantly.

Jim gazed at Sherlock, masterfully in command in his chair by the fireplace, precious violin in his lap, stroking the strings with his long fingers elegantly.

_Plink…plink…**plink**_. The pitch changed dramatically with each string, until the vibrating silver lines seemed to be screaming.

"He's downstairs." Jim said.

_Plink…plinkplinkplink…_

"Prove it."

"Where's Moran?"

**_"Plink…_** My room. Asleep."

"Prove it."

Sherlock paused, his fingers resting on a few strings. He grabbed his violin by the neck and placed it lovingly beside his chair. With one smooth gesture he motioned Jim's attention down a hallway, towards a white door. His bedroom presumably.

"See for yourself." He said; voice low and distrustful.

Jim mimicked his flowing gesture, pointing out the door of the flat.

"See for yourself." He mocked in a voice just as deep. Comically though, he doubted anyone could match Sherlock's baritone save a jaguar hiding in a cello.

Sherlock strode past Jim, apparently focused on seeing John, but John saw the cautious way which he edged around him, and kept an ear trained on him. He was _afraid_ of him.

As Jim approached the hallway, his mischievousness flared up in him.

"Shouldn't you buy me dinner first?"

Sherlock paused. "What?"

"Before I see your bedroom?"

Jim calculated the silence and allowed Sherlock time to express his disgust, which was done with a deep, tired sigh.

* * *

**Perhaps you've all noticed, perhaps I'm just paranoid, but anyway I've been shortening the chapters significantly so that I could streach them out until today. Today Spring Break begins, and since I'm to be divorced from the computers at my school I'll have plenty of time to write some more. Sadly, I'll also not be updating as regularly as I have been. **

**To get the idea of how irregularly, I might be able to make it to the public library once over the course of the break. Twice if I can drive a good bargain with my parents.**

**Sorry, there will be a long wait for new chapters, but I _promise_ that it'll be worth it! They will be longer, certainly, but also much better organized!**

**So, in short, to my dear loyal readers and my beloved reviewers, I shall say adieu. But I shal return triumphantly, and hopefull with your greetings! *Melodramatic wave***


	34. A Discovery

Chuckling to himself he strode down the hallway, wondering if Sherlock would have any trouble negotiating with John to release the railing.

He twisted the doorknob and pushed against the door, only to crash into the wood. There was something heavy blocking the door.

His voice automatically dropped to its lowest hush, as he whispered "Sebastian?"

The same panicked tone whispered back from behind the door "Jim?"

"What are you doing? I thought you were a kid?"

"What do ya mean what'm I doin'?" Sebastian snapped, words slurred with anger. "What do ya mean kid? Where're my clothes…"

Sebastian paused; jaw slacked, as realization struck him suddenly, with all the subtlety of lightning.

He weakly muttered "Genil?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Ah…" Sebastian shuddered, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings cloaked in darkness. "Where am I?" He asked apprehensively, frightened of the answer.

"Sherlock's room." Jim chirped.

"Oh, God."

"Come on, it's time to leave." Jim said, "We've got preparations to finish and…"

Sebastian interrupted Jim's developing monologue sheepishly. "Uh… listen."

"What?" Jim snapped.

"Could you…go into John's room and…maybe find a pair of pants?"

There was an uncomfortable pause in which Jim's face turned a degree paler.

"What're you wearing now?" he asked.

"Uh… my top." Sebastian said, face glowing with shame.

"Why?"

"I don't know!"

"Can't you find some of Sherlock's pants?" Jim asked, only half interested in his snipers apparent nudity. He actually was considering trying to convince Sebastian he didn't _need_ clothes, just so he could get out of the flat. The longer he stayed at Baker Street, the more likely it was that Sherlock was going to try and trap him. He loathed the thought of Sherlock's pet Detective Inspector ruining the tight bonds the four of them shared by butting in and trying to make a hero of himself.

Too bad Sebastian had his shame; otherwise they'd be the best of friends.

"I tried his pants, he's too thin! They don't fit."

"John is like, half your size!"

"But just my width…"

Jim slicked back his hair anxiously, as an extension of his frayed nerves and groaned. "Fine!"

"Thank you!" Sebastian exclaimed angrily, not realizing that Jim was already storming off to where he knew John's room to be. Sebastian sank to the cold floor and tried as best he could to cover himself by pulling his tank top down and trying to ignore the shame that seemed to be bleeding from the pit of his stomach into his limbs.

He stumbled over to a lamp and flipped the switch on, throwing a harsh yellow light on most surfaces. The rest of the room was pervaded by long, creeping shadows that stretched their hands into the crevices of the ceilings.

The room was a mess; the bed looked as though it had been stripped in a hurry and the sheets were strewn across the floor like sagging ghosts. The other lamp that stood on a night table just opposite the one Sebastian stood at had been knocked to the floor, and the table stood at an odd angle. There were crumbs and food stuffs littered around the room at random, but only one visible box.

"I would have thought Holmes would've kept a tighter ship than this…" Sebastian thought picking through the destruction with his toes. He kicked the box over until the brand was facing him and he started with a sudden, inexplicable awe at the label.

A chord of his memory twinged and searched desperately for an action to connect to. As the gears of his mind clanged together he brushed his face absentmindedly, collecting tiny crumbs in the palm of his hand. Instead of brushing the crumbs off, as he might've if he hadn't been thinking, he sniffed the contents of his hand, and tentatively licked the particles.

For the first time in his long career, Sebastian made a discovery before Jim.

Well, _discovery _would be a hard word for it. Sebastian immediately started to doubt his insane notion the moment it was born in what many over the years have called 'that smooth round thing sleeping inside your skull.' He had a long history of being amazingly incorrect on several points regarding anything to do with cause and effect.

Still, it was a _hypothesis_. And Jim was always telling him to test those thingies with experiments.

Knock, knock!" Jim said at the door. Sebastian eased himself off the wood enough for the master criminal to stick his arm through with the pants. When Sebastian snatched them from his hand, Jim tried to pile drive the door and force his way in, but Sebastian easily overpowered him, shutting the door with a snap.

Jim sulked, but waited patiently slouched against the door. Sometimes he felt like an itty bitty kitty trying to aggravate a large dog when he was with Sebastian. It bothered him how Sebastian, without going to the gym or working out at all, could easily overpower him. The man was a couch potato for crying out loud!

"How much longer?" Jim whined.

"Hang on." Sebastian commanded. John's pants _were _too small for him, but they were a better fit than Sherlock's. Sebastian struggled with the zipper, but ultimately squeezed into the confining jeans. Technically, they fit.

Well, not exactly _fit_. The legs of the pants, which Sebastian assumed were meant to touch one's ankles, squeezed his calves tightly. He could barely move as it was, and he imagined that soon he would spill out of the jeans or split them.

"Close enough." He said reaching for the door handle.

From the depths of the flat, an unearthly scream raised his heckles and sent the hairs on the back of his neck all a-quiver. Sebastian flung open the door and was greeted with the sight of Jim's back, racing down the hall in evident excitement. Like any hound, or shark, the smell of blood sent Jim into a frenzy of excitement. Sebastian leapt like a gazelle down the hall; because John's pants would not let him run outright when Jim froze in his place at the door to the stairs by the unmistakable pop of a gun which broke the silent night.

Sebastian felt his eyes widen with shock, but delayed the actual emotion until he could deal with it later. At the moment, the only thing he could think of doing was getting to the gun. His own gun, having been in his pants, had apparently been left behind and he didn't feel complete without it.


	35. Genil

**I'm back! Finally! With two chapters of Childish and a few more of Jim's on the way! :) Sorry about the break!**

* * *

Sherlock descended the stairs slowly. At any moment Jim could emerge from the flat, and he wanted to be prepared. His apprehension had nothing at all to do with the fact that his flat mate might be a toddler, and that recognizing him as such would make an impossible situation real. At least, so he thought.

Each plodding footstep sounded like the drumming of a dirge. It was extremely off-putting and set Sherlock's steady nerves on edge. He stepped lighter.

Peering down the last flight of steps he saw the top of someone's strawberry blond head, and it took him all of a millisecond to deduce that before John's hair went prematurely silver, it must have been as light and colorful as any of the other toddlers he'd seen.

The little boy had his arms wrapped around the rung of the stairs and appeared to be clinging to the wood for dear salvation. Sherlock stepped quickly.

John gave a small cry of discomfort, and as Sherlock got closer he noticed the strong black hands wrapped around the small child's waist, pulling him forcibly from the rung he held onto so dearly. With a swift wrenching motion the little boy's fingers were ripped from the wooden rod and a shriek was torn from his lips.

Sherlock's pace became a drumroll downstairs, and he shouted "Hey!" by way of introduction.

Before he had reached the bottom, he knew what he would find; but knowing didn't make the scene any easier, or less frightening.

Dr. Genil had the appearance of an extremely tall man, though he was shorter than Sherlock; especially so since Sherlock stood a half dozen steps above him. He appeared to be very thin and almost frail although Sherlock could see bulges of rippling muscles pushing through his thin blue shirt. Overall he gave off a healthy light, like someone who eats well and exercises regularly, but his face was pale and shallow, pulled tight over his bones like the skin over a drum. He seemed to have a perpetual glitter in his cold black eyes, but if one went looking for it, it would not be there.

He looked like someone who would love nothing better than to talk out issues, with the mien of a politician, but the gun-shaped bulge in his pocket spoke differently.

In short, the real Dr. Genil was a very different sight from the person who had visited Baker Street the first time.

"Sherlock Holmes." The Doctor said with a voice which faintly resembled moths beating their dry wings. "We meet at last. I've missed you these past two times."

Sherlock glanced from Genil's face, to that of John; eating up the image of his flat mate as best he could manage. The shape of his skull, the color of his eyes; It was all John. For real, for true, for certain his friend had been turned into a toddler. More thought would be applied to that later.

"Yes." Sherlock droned. "Very clever of you to send your friend in your place."

"It was wasn't it?" Genil said musingly, adjusting John on his hip. John seemed to be in a trance, and rested his exhausted head on Genil's shoulder, fist in his mouth. "I was worried you'd see through the decoy."

"I did." Sherlock said stepping forward off the stairs. Dr. Genil stroked John's hair lovingly with his black gloved hand. Black gloves which are only ever used to conceal fingerprints.

"But I was still curious. Why would you hire a detective to look into a murder that you yourself committed? Pure swank? Pride? No. It had to be more than that… What then?"

Sherlock took another experimental step. Genil's free hand dropped until it was level with his pocket. Sherlock stopped.

"I'm afraid I have no answer to give you Mr. Holmes." Genil said. John blinked back tears, curling and uncurling the fist he was sucking on. He wanted down, but was too afraid to fight the man that held him.

"Then put the boy down." Sherlock tried, raising his arms cautiously, as one might try to calm a raging animal. "He has nothing to do with this, put him down."

Genil bounced John slightly on his hip and John made a forced coughing noise of discomfort. Genil renewed his grip around John's bare legs with his frightening black gloves grinning softly. His cold disregard of Sherlock's pleas chilled the wizened detective more than an open admonition would've.

"Just so that we're clear, are you sure it's murder?" Dr. Genil said levelly, eyes sparkling inexplicably. "I could just be a victim of circumstance?"

Sherlock was taken aback by this, until he saw the laughter just beneath the surface of the cold placid face. He was taunting his deductive skills, teasing his reputation, pretending he was like a Detective Inspector who was uncertain how to interpret the evidence.

Sherlock stepped forward; Genil stepped back.

"Yes I'm sure." He snipped unkindly.

"But you don't know who I've killed, Hm?" Genil said, still grinning.

To Sherlock, his open flaunting of the evidence that had yet to be collected was akin to flourishing a red flag in the presence of a bull, an expression of the barest pride and the most foolish folly.

"Willa Erdrich." He said stepping forward. Genil's hand snaked into his pocket, but he stepped away from the slowly advancing detective.

"My lovely assistant? Why would I do that?" he said. His constant smile, even when he was talking made it seem as though he were gnashing his teeth wolfishly and words happened to seep out.

"Perhaps because she was leaving you. Perhaps because she rejected your advances." Sherlock started to rattle off reasons, making a small advance of his own. Slowly, Genil was edging his way towards the door. He needed to drop John before he got there.

"More likely because she refused to back your research, or she refused to be a test subject."

Something small and almost noiseless clicked in Genil's pocket.

"Willie's on vacation." He said, the joy gone from his frozen smile. "She applied for it herself."

"Coincidentally, so have a lot of your former partners, _Doctor_." Sherlock took another bold step, eyes blazing with a frigid flame. "Very few, if any seem to return to work. That seems to be uncanny, doesn't it _doctor_?"

John kicked Genil's side with his bare feet, his distress evident, but the doctor squeezed his little body with furious force against his side until he was still. John gasped, terror in every tiny thought.

"Let the boy go." Sherlock said. It was not a plea, or a request, but a cold command: ignore at your own risk.

"Hah hah…so, just who've you told this little theory to?"

"Trying to diminish my deductions by subjugating them will not take away the truth in them." Sherlock said icily, stepping closer to Genil. This time he did not move. "Put the boy down."

John mumbled "Sharock" and stretched his arm out pleadingly. Genil took one semi step closer towards the door. He was close enough to grab the handle and fling the door open, but Sherlock was close enough to grab _him_ and fling _him_.

Besides, he hadn't paid a visit to Baker Street to chat and abduct John Watson.

For a split second, his smile dropped into a scowl, but just as quickly as it had vanished it reemerged, leaving Sherlock half-wondering if he had imagined the scowl at all.

"…you are sharp Mr. Holmes, aren't you?" Genil said mock-casually. The gravity in his voice offset the conversational tone noticeably. John murmured "Sharock" again, quietly sobbing against Genil's shoulder.

"I'll tell you what; I _have_ been short on test subjects." He corrected himself with a nod. "Short on _volunteers._"

Sherlock saw the gun trembling, the hand sliding into place in his pocket; saw the tightening of the grip around John's dangling legs. He knew what he would do.

"I could use someone to test the long-term effects of the drug."

John sobbed louder, as though he knew when he was being referred to..

"But I'll have you know I have nothing but kindness for my subjects. That and you'll never find Willie's body!"

The gun finally emerged into the light as Genil whipped it out of his pocket, but Sherlock had already bound across the gap between him and Genil and had wrapped one wiry hand around Genil's wrist.

With a mad roar Sherlock twisted Genil's wrist until it was leveled at the ceiling. The doctor fought with a surprising strength to return the aim of the gun to its initial course of Sherlock's head, but the detective pressed down hard on the doctor's wrist, hoping to squeeze just the right spot and loosen Genil's grip.

John screamed as the two man grappled on top of him, Sherlock's thin arm snaked around his body and seemed to be trying to either pull him free or tug Genil's arm loose, but all the little creature was aware of was the giant forms crushing the air out of him, the groaning, growling noise of a fight, and the impression of something trying to kill him.

Genil surprised Sherlock by dropping John, who fell screaming, sliding down the doctor's leg and smashing his head against the wall with a hallow thud. Sherlock flinched in horror watching the disaster unfold, hypnotized, giving Genil's free hand time to seize the detective's throat in a crushing grip, pushing Sherlock backwards and accidentally kicking John hard in the ribs with his pointed black shoe.

Sherlock broke the doctor's grip, smashing his arm with his open palm causing Genil to fire the gun into the sky, creating clouds of dust and a rain of plaster and that sent a shower of white powder into their hair. John covered his face with his hands, wrapping his arms around his ears and curling into a protective ball screaming with all of the breath he could muster in that small, small body. That small, battered body.

Genil took a few furious swipes at Sherlock's face with a tight fist while the detective blinked powder out of his eyes. His arm slipped and Genil, in a moment of pristine insight and animal aggression brought the butt of the gun crashing down into the detective's skull with a savage roar.

Genil had the briefest image of an asteroid colliding with the earth flash through his mind when his bludgeon made a cracking noise and the detective collapsed backward lifelessly, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Sherlock gazed upwards, his eyes absent and empty, mouth gaping in surprise; looking, even a little bit rueful at being stunned. Then his head lolled back and his eyes rolled into his head, eyelids hurriedly shutting on the bleak scene and taut facial muscles easing into the stupor of sleep. A trickle of blood just above his eye from where the gun had made impact made a craggily route into the detective's sugar frosted black hair.

John grabbed the sides of his face, as though fearful his hear would rip in two, and screamed. As a dam breaks, the flood of tears broke loose and John screamed while sobbing, sobbed while screaming, rocking back and forth; consumed with horror and fear.

Genil glanced over John blankly. He would have plenty of time to deal with the emotionally scarred child later, perhaps back at his lab where he could council the child over blood tests and urine samples. Right now, he had a job to do.

With calculated ease he raised the gun to where the fallen detective's heart still beat weakly. He shut one eye and aimed. A roll of footsteps upstairs suddenly brought the gun back to his pocket.

Someone was coming downstairs.

He swore quickly and loudly, groping for the door handle and without turning back he flung himself into the night.

* * *

**Woo hoo! We finally meet the antagonist! This is such a big day for any story QvQ!**


	36. Begin the Hunt

"What the hell happened?" Jim asked no one in particular as he gathered in the scene at the foot of the stairs at 221b.

John looked up from his knees at the two men racing downstairs and saw only two new invaders and started his horse, panicked screaming again.

Jim cringed and Sebastian put one hand up to his ear. Jim hated the screaming worse than he had hated the sniveling little noises.

"Quiet him down!" Sebastian said, bending over Sherlock and inspecting the blood drenched face anxiously. Jim would not be happy if he lost his favorite plaything, so it was really for everybody's safety that Sebastian put his meager medical knowledge to work.

Jim cut over the detective's prostrate body and made an angry lunge for John, clamping one manicured hand over the wailing mouth and squeezing his soft little cheeks together.

"Shut up, you!" He hissed shaking John's head viciously.

"Jim!" Sebastian scolded.

"What?" Jim asked.

"Be nice." Sebastian said wiping away a bit of blood around the raised purple lump just above Sherlock's left eye.

"I am nice." He said as John began to whimper, trembling uncontrollably.

"He's just a kid Jim," Sebastian peered over the laceration, checked the detective's pulse hurriedly (which he should have done first), and forced open his eyelids to check for response. "Treat him like a baby."

"What do you suggest?" Jim hissed. He hardly noticed John's nose was leaking on his hand.

Sebastian motioned for an exchange and Jim happily pulled his hand away from the sobbing toddler, who squealed miserably. Standing, Sebastian walked over to John, knelt down and picked him up gently.

"Shhh, shhh." Sebastian said mechanically. "Shh, shh." John sobbed tremendously once more, but his tears tapered off slowly. Sebastian rocked lightly on his feet in a well-rehearsed dance and John sniffed sadly, leaning his head against Sebastian's shoulder in an expression of trust.

"There, there." Sebastian said and John's red face began to calmly relax. "I've got you, I've got you."

"Unbe-freaking-leivable." Jim said, in evident disbelief. "I've been trying to get him to stop crying all night."

"Shhh-shhh-shhh." Sebastian said, regaining his rhythm. Tiredly, John closed his eyes and let Sebastian rock him into a stupor. At last, the toddler was at peace.

"How'd you learn to do that?" Jim had to know.

"Like a boss." Sebastian whispered.

"Really."

"My sister had one. She'd make me sit it." He softly said.

Jim frowned like thunder. "That unmarriageable sow?"

"Yes." Sebastian said calmly. He was under no illusions as to the appearance of his sister, or Jim's opinion of her.

"How'd she get a kid?"

"She bought it." Sebastian said sarcastically, "How do you think?"

Sherlock moaned softly. Jim and Sebastian stood stock-still in silence.

"Just a cut." Sebastian said, answering Jim's unasked question. "Head wounds bleed all out of proportion to their _actual_ seriousness."

"Who would _dare_?" Jim asked poisonously. He did not like it when people damaged his things, and he gazed over Sherlock as one would asses a piece of property that had come to some damage.

"All things considered?" Sebastian thought the answer seemed obvious, which meant that Jim had probably thought of it first, although he wasn't in the habit of asking needless questions.

"Hold on." Jim whispered, mounting the steps to the flat and leaving Sebastian alone with the two snoozing detectives. He rocked awkwardly and felt that, once again, there was something horribly wrong going on.

Jim re-emerged hefting something which gave him great difficulty, a large, black, bulky object. Instantly Sebastian recognized the Von Herder, forgotten in a few moments of panic. Sebastian's face burned with embarrassment as he realized how pathetic his situation was.

"I'm docking you a month's pay for negligence idiot."

Sebastian would have argued, but on reflection loss of money was much better than Jim's usual punishment for idiots: death. He wearily nodded.

"Let's get out of here." Jim said curtly. Sebastian silently agreed. He bumped John gently, just enough to wake him up. John stirred, sleepy, disoriented and uncertain of his surroundings, but Sebastian had no time to pretend to reassure him. He dropped John in close proximity to Sherlock, knowing that his experiment in the flat was set, and all he needed to do was wait.

As soon as Sebastian stepped outside he regretted it. Small snow flurries drifted merrily out of the black December sky, and all he had to defend him from the elements was his thin sleeveless top and a pair of ill-fitting, borrowed pants. His toes froze and died on his feet.

"I swear to all that is holy Jim, if you turn that AC on high, I'll kill you." He chattered, shivering as he tried to climb into the car.

Jim quietly turned the heat on in his car. A first.

They drove in silence; apart from the squeal of tires, the honking of horns and the cries of late-night pedestrians. Perhaps it would be more apt to say they didn't speak.

Jim pulled into the building which housed Sebastian's pathetic flat, running over something with an ominous bump.

"We're here." He said.

"Are you going to tell me?" Sebastian asked as the roar of the engine faded into a blissful coma.

"No." He said.

"Aren't you going to ask: 'Tell me what'?" Sebastian pressed.

"Uh… No." Jim insisted.

"Jim…" Sebastian said in a warning tone.

"I don't know what you're on about now!" Jim snapped.

"Alright, then I'll just come out and say it: Why did I end up at Baker Street and John end up with you?" Sebastian roared.

Jim thought back, back to the moment he'd found the two toddlers in the hall of the lab. In an instant he'd remembered Sebastian's story, of how he'd been turned into a toddler by Dr. Genil's gas and in an instant he recognized the two children for what they were and in that same instant a slap-dash plan had fermented in his mind. Sherlock was right behind him, no more than a few moments away, yet he still grabbed both children, tucked under his arms and tried to carry them off, struggling. Then suddenly Sherlock was right behind him, the plan had dissolved in a flash and escape only had been at the top of his mind. In a desperate ploy he dropped one of the squirming bodies and ran. It wasn't until later that he realized he had dropped the wrong one.

"Uh… it was dark." He lied. "John Watson was awake and reaching for me, and I thought he was you, recognizing me."

Sebastian seemed satisfied, and he rested back into the leather cushions.

"Best not let Sherlock know about this." Sebastian said almost cheerily. "He thinks you're infallible."

Jim chuckled emptily.

Sebastian let him finish his mirthless laughter. There was a silent pause between them, and the change in intentions was palpable in the air.

"Sebastian, I _want_ this man." He said quietly. "Suspend all operations, dip into the reserve, and call upon anyone or anything you need to. I don't care if we have to hunt him down on _horseback_, he must pay."

Sebastian tried to gauge the seriousness of Jim's expression, but it was impossible in the low light. His boss's face was turned away from him.

"Yes sir."

"Begin the Hunt."

* * *

**So, I hate it when I find plot holes. I just realized that Sebastian didn't take his Von Herder from the flat. That means that John's had it this whole time. He must have been hiding it from Sherlock. Plot hole sealed! I'll try to make it more secure in later chapters.**


	37. Stars

Sherlock blinked away the stars and tried to quench the flames of the sun that blazed in his eyes and threatened to melt his face off. The inky blackness of space seemed to suffocate him with its cold dead arms, pulling him down, down, down into the abyss of light and shadow. His melting face bent and stretched in absurd and improbably directions, being pulled by the hands and the gravity of each nearby star.

He blinked again, and the darkness of space faded into the dim lighting the flat, pervaded with the meek glow of the stars, which winked with a charming yellow light.

He blinked again and there were much fewer stars, though it still felt like his face was being pulled. The sun by his head had mellowed into a drumming supernova, flashing his with its heat and energy in time with his pulsing heart.

He blinked again and there were only two stars, the sun was merely a burning, stinging knife of pain above his eye. He recognized it as a probable concussion. His face was still being pulled though.

He raised himself carefully on his elbows, gazing into the looming stars curiously, wondering why they would not disappear with every other sensory hallucination, wondering why they held such gravity on his face.

The light of the stars expanded and brightened, and the small, soft face of a child was suddenly revealed to Sherlock.

The two year old John Watson knelt over him, gripping his lower lip in one tight fist.

"Herro?" Sherlock asked as he sat up on his knees.

John let him sit up, watching his progress with bleary eyes. He was tired of being analyzed, and impatient to sleep, but he let Sherlock scan him up and down, and even silently let him test the tenderness of his head and ribs.

Sherlock crossed his legs Indian-style and placed John on his lap, studying him up and down with rapt attention which only partly came from concern for his well-being.

He poked John's nose, testing the retraction of the cartilage as well as the apparent shrinkage of the bone. John grabbed his face with both hands and refused to reveal it again until Sherlock had brushed his fingers lightly over his bruised chest and tentatively tickled his belly, which John apparently felt was more intrusive than it was amusing, because he crossed his arms over his ribs and scowled.

Sherlock noticed the redness of his face, the tear stains on his cheeks and dried them with the palms of his large hands.

"You've been crying." He stated the obvious, since the person upon whom that responsibility normally lay could not yet talk.

He brushed against John's firmly crossed arms, feeling the crusted snot adhered to the surface of his beloved jumper and the slimy texture of fresh mucus.

"You've been crying for a while." He deduced.

John listened with indifference. He was hungry, cold, hurt, but most importantly scared. The man who had hurt him could be just outside; just behind the stairs waiting to squeeze the air out of him, or wrap him up and shake him and every shadow looked like a leering monster.

He sniffed woefully.

Sherlock shivered from the draft rushing under the door, and then looked diminutively down at John's bare legs: vast pale fields of goose pimples topped by snow-white toes.

"Alright." He said cupping John's buttocks and hoisting him upon his shoulder. "To the flat."

John clung to the purple fabric breathlessly. Beneath the folds of the belstaff coat, heat seeped like a god-sent miracle. He snuggled into the crook of Sherlock's neck and a massive weight lifted from over his tiny shoulders. Some great, obscure cosmic sense told him merrily that he was home.

"Smauck." He muttered contently.


	38. What now?

**Sorry! Testing in the library, all chapters late!**

* * *

"Huh." Sherlock only half-felt the weight of the toddler in his arms, he was busy making measurements and taking notes.

Height, slightly over two foot tall… weight, almost four-stone…. Scent, somehow resembling that of soap. His eyes darted around the hallway looking for a piece of paper and pencil to record his observations, but found none. He would continue the search anxiously in the flat, once he had sealed John and himself in that impenetrable fortress that he could defend.

He pressed the child closely to his chest, remembering with a cold shiver that awful, soulless grin. In one part of his mind, he was dimly aware that the situation was over, Genil had, for some reason fled; but he was distracted by the throbbing knot developing on his forehead that reminded him that he would not be gone for long.

Breathlessly, Sherlock slid up to the door of the flat. He pushed against the wood and found it partially open. He paused, waiting for some curt comment, or the squealing of the little Moran Monster at the heels of his Master, but all that meet him was the silence of an empty flat and the almost inaudible crackling of a whitened log in the still-smoldering fireplace.

He glanced inside, turning so that John was the last thing to enter the flat and peered into the sitting room. All was precisely as he'd left it on first glance. The only thing missing was Moriarty.

Cautiously he slunk inside, only too aware that while he'd been unconscious Moriarty could have been hiding himself and his minion away, preparing an ambush while he was preoccupied with John.

He cringed. "John."

Glancing down upon the head that he'd seen at the foot of the stairs, Sherlock had a sudden stunning revelation that almost caused him to drop his flat mate.

_Now that I have him, what am I to do with him?_ He thought in a sudden cold panic. No one knew better than he how terrible he was with children. He could hunt them down when they went missing, or were kidnapped, but so far as caring for and consoling them…that was John's department.

"You've abandoned your department John." He murmured, resting his chin on the feather-soft pillow of hair.

John grunted in acknowledgement.

Sherlock paced the floor once, twice, and then dropped himself into his chair by the dying fire, forgetting the child in his arms, and certainly forgetting that Moriarty could still be in his flat. He figured if Moriarty _was_ still around, he wouldn't wait very long. He would be impatient to see Sherlock's reaction to the impossible transformation.

John lounged across Sherlock's chest, his limbs as heavy as stone weights, and melted into the warmth of the flickering tongues of yellow flame like a large stick of butter. He was home.

Sherlock, on the other hand, was stricken. The weight of John's transformation hung over him like the weight of John. _How _was he going to get his partner and flat mate back? Did _Genil_ know how he could transform John into a man again? Was he supposed to wait it out? Could _he_ synthesize an antidote?

All of these thoughts and many more whirled through his exhausted mind. He placed his fingers on the back of John's neck and steepled them together as John lightly nuzzled his chest.

His phone rang. He briefly wondered if he should answer it. That question, at least was answered quickly: no, he had too much on his mind to humor _anybody_ at the moment.

His phone rang again. He pointedly continued to ignore it.

John was so heavy; it felt like he couldn't breathe. Or was he just panicking? No, John was heavy. He would have to move soon. What did toddlers eat? It must be something good to make John so heavy.

"_Well you can tell by the way I use my walk…"_

Sherlock flinched. His phone was _singing._ What's worse, it was singing _that song_… _Moriarty's song._ His thoughts drifted back to a cold dark night at the edge of a pool glinting brightly, John pale and wan pulling open his coat to reveal the semtex vest, an enemy in the shadows stepping into the light.

He floundered with pulling it out of his pocket, bumping John with his arm and mashed a few buttons to make it be silent.

The text floated to the front of the screen:

Mr. Sex:

**Don't ignore me; we've got too much in common.**

Sherlock flinched, not so much at the text, but at the sheer indignity of the thing. How had Moriarty gotten his phone? He never left it lying around. He'd even personalized his text alert noise and his caller ID…How?

Sherlock scrolled absently for a few moments, running his fingers over the tender mound of swollen flesh above his eye, confirming his worse fears: _Staying Alive_ was not even one of his saved ringtones. He didn't know how to delete it!

John groaned, warning Sherlock to remain still while he slept. He was ignored.

Sherlock scrolled through his messages.

Unknown:

**Is Johnny back to normal yet?**

Unknown:

**Because Sebbie is. He's all grown up now. **

Sherlock sighed, let his phone drop, and let the information compute. Moran was a man again. Not only did this mean that he had one more enemy to look out for, but that there was also a way to turn John back into a man as well.

A thought struck him suddenly, like a mosquito bite, unsettling and irritating: How did Moran find the solution before he did?

The funk music began to play from his phone again, but Sherlock was prepared for it this time and he leapt upon it eagerly, murdering it before it had the chance to rankle him.

Mr. Sex:

**Or hasn't Johnny told you about our run in with Agent Y?**

"_Oh no."_ Sherlock thought, clamping his teeth together in frustration. Jim was just trying to rattle him, if John was keeping things from him, he'd know. Besides, he had no memory of a run in with any Agent.

He read the text once more, running over the word '_our_' like a speed bump. What did he mean by _our?_

He texted as much back in an angry huff.

The reply was instantaneous:

Mr. Sex:

**Ho ho!**


	39. Bitter, bitter blow

Sherlock silenced his phone and simmered angrily. Moriarty knew something he didn't. That alone rankled and stung him. But Moriarty knew that _John knew_ something he didn't. That was a bitter, bitter blow.

He played with the notion of asking Moriarty about it, demanding the details, interrogating him about every nuance of his texts. It would at least stand to amuse him. He batted the notion away after he realized that Moriarty probably wouldn't play with him. He was unlikely to be intimidated, highly likely to lie, and furthermore Sherlock didn't want to have to ask for something from his nemesis. He should be able to figure things out for himself.

That sealed it: he would try to deduce what Moran had done or ingested that incited his transformation, and then change John back. Then he could quiz John and see if Moriarty was lying.

But what if Moriarty was lying about Moran changing back? Why would he do that?

Sherlock rested his head against the back of his chair. He had too many questions, not enough data. He did not even have the will to gather more. He just wanted to sink off to sleep with John on his chest.

He felt a cold fist of fear knot in his stomach when he realized that might be the concussion talking.

He sat up in his chair and let John slide down to his lap. John glared up at him ruefully, as though saying : "If you're going to keep moving, go ahead and put me down. I want to sleep."

Sherlock amended his restlessness by gingerly lifting the child and carefully laying him out in his chair by the dying fire where it was still the warmest. John looked up at him gratefully with weary, dark eyes then rested his head on his arm and with a cleansing sigh fell asleep.

Sherlock tip-toed into the kitchen to find himself an icepack; the pain in his forehead was beginning to trouble him. If John hadn't been incapacitated, he would have something to say about the nasty welt that seemed to be slowly trying to leap off of his face. It felt as though Sherlock were growing another head, but he was almost certain that it wasn't as bad as it felt. He was almost certain that if John had been an adult he would've said the same thing. He was almost certain that his head was dripping blood onto his palm.

He groaned and sifted through the icebox, pushing aside a few frozen meals and his experiment on frostbite in order to find their old, trusty icepack that had served him more times than he could count, or indeed remember. He kept glancing at the smear of red in his palm, willing it to disappear.

He finally grasped the worn pack and with a sigh of relief slapped it onto his head with a crumbling, snapping sound as the ice inside contorted to the shape of his aching skull. It was bliss, a cool, icy, healing kiss.

His head now attended to, he began his hunt around the kitchen to gather data. The first thing the little sniper-baby had raided was the cupboard where they kept their perishables, such as cereal and crackers. There were flakes of several cereals strewn across the floor, and shreds of cardboard lay in jagged strips across the medley of breakfast from where the little monster had gained entrance to their prize. Sherlock gazed at these clues absently. There were at least seven types of cereals that he could see among the piles of debris. It was impossible to narrow down which one had been the catalyst for his transformation, if any. He would have to search for something more definitive.

He carefully opened the fridge and marveled at the unparalleled destruction with a gaping mouth. The adult Moran could not have done more damage if he'd laid siege to the fridge with his automatic. All of the condiments seemed to have been opened and poured together into a faintly gray paste that the toddler had used as finger paint. Handprints were evident on every shelve, footprints only on the bottom three. The condiment paste, which smelled sharp and faintly noxious had been smeared on several boxes of leftover takeout, jars of jams and pickled vegetables, and even the milk. The only thing that had been spared from the plague had been the fruits that had been slowly disintegrating in the very back of the fridge: those had suffered a fate of their own.

Across London, in a small, derelict flat Sebastian Moran was changing into a pair of faded gray sweatpants, and carefully, fearfully folding John Watson's pants so that he could throw them in a dark corner until he gathered up the courage (or got drunk enough) to return them. He paused, noticing a sheen on everything he touched. He rubbed his fingers together and for the first time felt the slime. He sniffed his hand, and noticed that only his fingers had a bitter, poignant aroma that seemed vaguely familiar. He tentatively licked his thumb, and then, hurriedly his shirt to wash away the horrific burning sweet-sour flavor that was still indiscernible, yet oddly familiar.

Sherlock grabbed his bag of thumbs and carefully counted out all ten. He wasn't certain that the little monster had gotten into his experiments, but he still wanted to eliminate all doubt.

The kitchen search had turned out to be indeterminate. Sherlock was completely baffled as to what Moran might've ingested, or in what quantity. It appeared that he had partaken of a little bit of everything. It would be difficult to replicate such conditions for John, mostly since he doubted anyone, child or otherwise would be willing to try nine cereals, paired with condiments, fruits, pickles, crackers, strawberry frosting, a small quantity of blood, some lunchmeat, a block of Munster cheese, granola and what appeared to be a packet of unprepared hot chocolate, judging by the dried little marshmallows and gritty brown dust without any milk. Certainly not without _some_ kind of beverage.

Sherlock leaned back on the heels of his feet and chewed his tongue. There was one other place in the flat he could search. The little demon had been building a nest inside his room. Truthfully he'd been too concerned with John and his dwindling sanity to give much thought to the bite-sized beast's comings and goings and had sacrificed his room for his peace of mind.

Now it loomed at him from down the dark hallway, beaconing and goading him to come and see, come and be surprised, daring him to keep a straight face in the wake of what would be terrible destruction.

He refused to be goaded.


	40. Sanctuary

He returned to John, rationalizing that securing his helpless flat mate was priority number one when they found themselves under siege, but once he actually approached John he found himself at a loss for what to do. He started at his friend, curled into a tight fetal position, resting on his arm like a pillow and marveled at the tiny hands, arms, legs, body. He was so small, and his head was so comparatively large. The result was biologically meant to be disarming and cause one to feel protective.

Sherlock certainly felt the biological protectiveness surging within him. He had the sense that the opportunity called for him to swoop over the sleeping child and shield him from the cold and dangers of the world with his body, but what cold? The fire still burned weakly in the ashy grate. What dangers? The safest place for John was in the flat.

Sherlock felt a ripple of unease undermining his internal monologue. The fearful black hands loomed in his mind. The ice pack that he had clasped to his head was beginning to bite him with its icy claws. He saw the white, wolfish grin like a gash in the shadows of the flat.

He bent over the sleeping child, still absorbed in the _wonder_ of the thing. A fountain of youth that spurted from science; how wonderful. How awesome. How incredible. Here John was blessed with unnaturally long life, a chance to be young and free again, sleeping, totally unaware of his monumental contribution to science and alchemy.

Sherlock gently poked John's soft, round cheek, marveling at the softness. John opened his eyes and Sherlock ran his finger around in a clockwise circle, half-hoping to sooth the child back to sleep, certainly unwilling to try and learn some desperate parenting skills all of a sudden in an attempt to take care of little John's wants and needs.

Happily, John sensed this and complied, shutting his eyes and breathing very quietly. Sherlock sighed in relief, brushing John's hair away from his face with one large, flat palm, the way he vaguely remembered his mother doing so when he was small.

He looked up to the darkened windows and let his icepack drift off of his head. The crescent moon reminded him of the glinting malicious smile as it floated lazily down behind the empty house across the street.

He stood up and did something that he hadn't done often before. He went downstairs and securely locked the door.

There were other entrances to the flat, but only through Mrs. Hudson's rooms, or a window. He felt better already.


	41. Rememberence

Up in the flat, as Sherlock jingled his golden keys and marched dully across the wood, John Watson lay on his side, unwillingly awake. He longed for sleep desperately, but the pain in his head kept him alert, if dreary.

He sat up, feeling pathetic and hating himself for it. He felt a cry coming again, but he knew if he cried he would hate himself for it. He just wanted to sleep and forget how small and weak he felt, forget the nagging fear that nipped at his every thought, forget whatever it was his brain was violently trying to cling to, disrupting his every waking moment with uncertainty.

It was as though he were searching for a word, a phrase, a name, but no matter how long he racked his brain he just wouldn't light on it, it was driving him mad, and what's worse he couldn't bring himself to stop.

His mind was like a racing engine, a machine that tore itself to bits without doing the first useful thing that it was made for. The pulsating bruise from where he'd hit his head against the wall didn't help anything either.

As he looked around the flat, not really noticing anything, he suddenly found himself inexplicably attracted to something on the coffee table. It swallowed the whole of his attention, and like a driver suddenly emerging from a tunnel, so he suddenly emerged from the cloud that had been smothering his senses.

He remembered.

* * *

Across London, in a derelict flat on a large, cheap wooden table marred by scratches and burns like bygone hero of a forgotten war Jim Moriarty smoothed out a large-scale map of London. It was a lovely map, with careful attention to detail, bright cheery colors and tiny notes in swirly black ink denoting favorite haunts. Jim took a red marker and added a few flourishes to the map.

"Here, here, and here." He said proudly after each blood-colored circle was added.

He turned and beckoned his newly-recovered sniper, Sebastian Moran to adore his work. Sebastian had been chain smoking since he'd gotten back to his flat, except when he'd taken a shower to remove the gray sludge from his fingers and feet, and he'd built a small mountain of ash in his blue ashtray, which he now used to stomp out another butt ruefully.

"'Here, here, and here' _what?"_ Sebastian asked pulling another slender stick from the tattered box.

"Silly Sebbie, These are the buildings that I've managed to track all of that grant money to."

Sebastian took a long, slow drag. He loved smoking around Jim, because long pauses while he thought didn't seem awkward.

"Just so we're clear, do you _know_ the difference between conversation you have with _yourself_ and conversations you have with me?"

Jim frowned, furrowed his brow, and then turned back to the map, studying it seriously.

"Genil had several grants from the government, pouring money into his various vague projects. He also seemed to have spontaneously acquired funds of a different sort."

Jim looked up expectantly, hoping that for once Sebastian understood the implications of his statement. For once, Sebastian did. Large amounts of money acquired through science, but not from the British government meant only one thing: Rouge governments, terrorists, villains, bad-guys, Jim. Genil had defected.

"So all of the grant money he was getting from the… 'our' government went into these buildings?" Sebastian asked.

"Everything that was traceable, I traced." Jim said proudly. In truth he was an excellent detective, able to hunt and trace anyone or anything with nothing more than a name and a city. He was especially smug when he didn't need to send small jobs off to be done by small minions in the organization. He thought it gave everything a personal touch when he did it himself. If the hunt for Genil was going to be much like that night was turning out, Genil would be _touched_ all over.

"Why would he need so many?" Sebastian pressed.

Jim rolled his eyes. Sebastian had literally known him for almost a decade, and he still acted like asking an obvious question was the prime sin in his presence.

"To hide, of course." Jim said, preparing his best _listen to teacher_ tone. "If you were playing various legitimate and non-legitimate governments against each other, you'd want somewhere to lie low while the heat died from one, where you could still work for the others."

Jim slapped his hand over Piccadilly, causing the table to rattle.

"I'll bet you he has more hidey-holes than just this. We need to find him and start dogging him. We'll save raiding his rat-holes for later, when we're sure we have him cornered."

Sebastian grunted in approval. He wasn't meant to voice an opinion, he was only meant to know what to do when it was time to work, and sometimes he didn't even have that.

"Also, we'll need to find some rouge scientists of our own. We need an antidote to Genil's demeaning method of subjugation, and we need it yesterday!" Jim was beginning to sound like some old television general delivering a speech to his regiment of one. Sebastian grinned, knowing that for once he had come prepared to one of these types of meetings.

"I think I might have the answer to that one." He said. The look of shock on Jim's face was indescribable.

* * *

Sherlock tossed the key onto the coffee table and collapsed into John's chair. The unfamiliar cushion accepted him grudgingly. He gazed upon his feet, looking at them without seeing them. Then he gazed at John, registering his motion, but totally missing the significance of it.

John was licking his hands, wiping his face and licking his hands again, much like a cat. To Sherlock this action was inexplicable and illogical, though if he'd turned his attention to John a few seconds earlier, he might've seen the last few crumbs of the Chocolate Chip biscuit disappear forever into the ravenous toddler.

The biscuit had been purposely set out for him: placed upon a napkin on the only table that was his height. It was the same table where Sherlock and Jim had sat down to their meager feast a few weeks earlier, but only Sebastian knew the significance of the location when he had hurriedly tossed the biscuit down and galloped after Jim down the stairs of 221b.

"What're you doing?" Sherlock asked, weary beyond reason. He did not actually care what John was doing. The icepack lay limp in his hand, which barely clung to the frigid pack with the tips of his fingers.

John placed his hand on his head and winced. The bruise was there. Sherlock thoughtlessly stood up, cut through the living room and dropped the icepack onto John's aching head.

"Mmmm." John said, probably meaning something along the lines of _thank you._

"Don't mention it." Sherlock said, too tired to argue with his reason and logic, who still had quite a bit to bicker about the impossibility of the situation.

"_Oh go home!"_ he thought tersely. "_He's a child and we need to learn to deal with it, you can't help me at all if you refuse to even accept the evidence in front of our eyes!_"

His reason and logic shut up and refused to talk with him for the rest of the night. Which was just as well, since he didn't want them anyway. It was clear that logic was going to be nearly useless when it came to helping John, since it had flown out the window in the first place. Logic was a quitter.

He winced. It was rare he abandoned his reason; it was even rarer that he pretended reason was a real person. He must've been more concussed than he thought. He was certainly more tired than he'd thought. He'd gone four days without sleep once, yet now standing wrapped in a blanket of heat in the dimly lit flat he sensed that he was slowly drifting away from his body.


	42. Conversations With Oneself

He fidgeted in John's chair, pulling his long, lean legs up and resting his head on them.

"If Genil wants a test subject, he's going to have to come back for you." Sherlock said to John.

John rubbed the icepack in a circle and listened silently.

"Well, maybe not. If he has more of that gas he could make _anyone_ a toddler."

"Mmmm." John said again in vague acceptance.

"Even me." Sherlock said. The pregnant pause after this statement seemed laced with thick, sickly irony.

"If he comes back for either of us, we may have a chance to squeeze an antidote out of him."

"Yeah-huh." John nodded.

"There is an antidote out there." Sherlock yawned into his knees and leaned back. His eyelids seemed to have a magnetic attraction to each other. "I know there is. Moran was transformed into a child, but now he's a man. If he could figure it out, why can't…we…"

Sherlock rubbed his eye with the palm of his hand and waited in oblivious anticipation for John to answer him. His head eased into the back of John's chair, his eyes pulled the curtain on the odd performance of the evening and the stage lights went out. Sherlock's role for that night was over and he left it up to John to perform the final act.

John glanced up at his sleeping flat mate and waited for him to keep talking, but after a minute it became clear to him that Sherlock was beyond waking. It was just as well; Sherlock seldom slept anyway, and John was uncertain of how to explain the newest development in the curious affair of his transformation.

He placed the icepack on the chair and gently eased himself to the floor, testing the cold wood uncertainly, unsure if his tender young legs would support his unwieldy body. He gradually transferred all of his weight from one leg, to the other, and let go of the chair. He was delighted when he took a step and didn't collapse.

He waddled up to his chair, which was now not only too large for him, but filled with the enormous sleeping form of his friend. He tugged on Sherlock's elbow, to check if he was truly asleep, and when he didn't stir said: "Goodnight Sherlock. I'll see you in the morning" and walked to his room.

Upstairs in the comforts of his own familiar confines, John peeled off his disgusting jumper and placed it in the dirty clothes hamper for a brief period of interment. He ignored the signs of a raid through his closet and drawers and climbed into bed, feeling deliciously free crawling beneath the covers completely naked.

He burrowed into his plush pillow and threw his sheets up over his shoulders until he had a pocket of warmth generating around his arms and chest. Only once did he peer into the darkness and imagine a figure there, preparing to throw his blanket over his head and try to smother him, but it was an illusion. He sank off to a blissful coma, and for the third time that day, changed.


	43. The Awakening

**Long Chapter Alert! Long Chapter Alert! Prepare for an extremely long chapter! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! (I ****_did_**** promise longer chapters ya know...you get what you ask for)**

* * *

John awoke fresh, if not a bit hungry, to the grainy filtering of sunlight peering through his curtains. Each golden thread placed a spotlight across his crème covers, which he counted as he stretched mightily, toes curling, shoulders arching, face smiling.

He sat upright in bed, throwing his arms into the air and bending his back in a continuation of his first, glorious stretch, fists curling behind his ears, fingers clutching at the ceiling.

He paused, the stretch failed to bring him comfort as he realized with a sinking feeling he felt too free.

He snatched up his covers and peered between the sheets.

"_Where…"_ he thought, flabbergasted "…_are my underpants?"_

He blinked away his shock and organized his initial question into a handful of smaller questions:

"_When did I go to bed last night?"_

"_How did I go to bed last night?"_

"_What was I doing last night?"_

He felt that these were all wonderful, applicable questions that sorely deserved an answer. He ran his fingers through his messy hair and yelped as he roughly jostled his bruise.

Suddenly it all made sense to him; the amnesia, the headache, his clothes: _he'd been drinking_. It was the only explanation for all three phenomena. He'd gone out to have a few with Mike probably… and then what? Forgot his clothes at the bar? Fell and hit his head? Something wasn't right, if he'd been drinking why wasn't he hung over? He mulled this over and let it sink in. Drinking explained everything, but it didn't explain it well.

Hunger pecked at him like a nervous bird and he rolled out of bed and scavenged around for a pair of underpants, meekly opening his drawers and ignoring the unpleasant draft.

He stared at the open drawer and for a horrible second felt himself becoming like Sherlock in the slightest, almost unperceivable way. His underpants were disorganized, and observably ruffled, as though someone had lifted them up without unfolding them and placed them back.

John rummaged through his drawer, checking for anything that might have been hidden beneath his boxers. There was nothing. He dressed quickly, feeling foolish.

Next John searched for pants and made a new discovery: two pairs were missing.

He owned ten pairs of pants, not including his lonely, dusty suit. Five pairs needed to be washed, while the other five pairs should have been in his drawer. There were only three.

John crinkled his nose and decided on a cursory search of his dirty clothes hamper where he uncovered the jumper he recalled wearing the day before. It was stretched out in the arms, covered with a crusty substance and wrinkled into a strange, animal shape. Definitely not something he would do to a jumper.

He abandoned his search for the missing pants and settled on a simple pair of blue jeans and a red shirt, catapulting himself downstairs before his stomach consumed itself.

"Morning." He called into the darkened room. Silence met him. John slowed down and trotted to a halt. Sherlock was always awake before he was, if he wasn't answering, he was either busy or gone. Or something was very, very wrong.

John stepped quietly through the room and peered at the shape amassed in his chair. It looked suspiciously like Sherlock, which is exactly what it couldn't have been. Sherlock never slept, and if he did sleep he either slept on a dangerous pillow made from his lab equipment, or, sporadically, in his bed.

John stared at his flat mate, for that was exactly who it was and marveled at the rareness of the vision that appeared before him like a mirage: Sherlock sleeping slouched in his chair.

He tip-toed to the kitchen and tried not to wake his exhausted friend, until he beheld the apocalyptic ruin of the kitchen and was forced to reconsider.

His hallow stomach snarled at him viciously as he beheld all of their cereal scattered across the floor, the miscellaneous ooze splattered over the fridge and most of their food stuffs spoilt.

"Mrs. Hudson's not going to like this." He said aloud, half-hoping to wake Sherlock so he could angrily demand an explanation. Sherlock didn't stir, and John decided to let him sleep. Evidently he'd been busy last night.

John paused only to grab his wallet and stormed from the flat, irritated and hungry. He flew out the door and straight into the café for breakfast. He furiously ordered the breakfast sampler, which was a large meal which featured a bagel, waffle, pancake, fried egg, two sausage links, three strips of bacon and a wedge of cantaloupe. He made a lot of enemies in the café that morning when he changed his order to two and made them to go.

With the tantalizing seduction of food wafting through his head, John was in a much friendlier mood when he walked into the flat. He didn't even mind noticing the plaster speckled across the floor, or the fresh bullet hole in the ceiling. He absently wondered what had happened and appreciated the perfect triangle it made with the other two bullet holes that had pock marked the ceiling long before their brother had been added.

He carried his Styrofoam bounty to the table in the living room and fished a clean fork out of a pile of magazines and set to work killing his hunger. He ravenously gnawed away at the bacon strips and had begun shoveling the egg into his mouth when he realized he was missing jam for his pancake. While he was up he retrieved milk, honey, syrup, cream cheese and butter and tossed them all onto the table with a mighty clatter (except for the milk, which he held carefully in a glass).

Sherlock sniffed and stirred while John feasted. John silently watched him rouse himself from his stupor, folding the jam-smothered pancake and feeding it into his mouth greedily. He felt as though he hadn't eaten the night before, which, he reminded himself, was entirely possible.

At last, John nibbled contently at his bagel and Sherlock's eyes fluttered open dreamily.

"Good Morning." John said, sipping his milk mildly.

Sherlock started at him fixatedly.

"What?" He sputtered.

"Good Morning." John repeated patiently. He would have plenty of time to be mad at Sherlock for the mess in the kitchen and the bullet hole downstairs later.

But first, "I brought some breakfast from the café." John said holding up the gutted remains of his own take-away box.

Sherlock stared at John, eyes eating him apart with their usual shrewd observations. Finally Sherlock threw his legs over the leg of John's chair, righted himself with a massive bound and leapt up to John, snatching his bagel out of his hand and shaking it at him angrily.

"What is this?" He asked accusingly.

"It's a bagel." John said with his practiced flat tone. It would take extremely odd behavior from Sherlock to make him react with any measure of incredulity.

Sherlock tossed the bagel over his shoulder where it spiraled to the floor hopelessly.

"Hey!" John rose up; it was his turn to be accusing. "I was eating that!"

Sherlock responded by seizing John by the head and turning his confiscated head this way and that, like an antiques appraiser presented with an unusual piece of china.

"What are you doing?" John asked placidly. Then he looked up and noticed the ugly purple raised welt just above Sherlock's left eye.

"Sherlock!" John cried in surprise "What happened to your eye?"

Sherlock stopped straining John's neck and squinted into his eyes.

"Don't you remember anything?" he asked carefully, slowly.

"No." John deliberately made his response as blunt as possible, and the effect was as desired: the news hit Sherlock like a sledge hammer to the face. He released John, who staggered backwards and rubbed his neck angrily.

"What happened last night? Why is there a mass in the kitchen? Where did the bullet hole in the ceiling downstairs come from?" John spat out each question after a thoughtful pause in which he eliminated the hundred or so questions he had wanted to ask down to the pivotal three.

Sherlock stared at John, the glimmer of hope returning to his eyes, the spark of discovery burning behind the contours of his face.

He pulled out his phone and scrolled through the messages.

"Didn't you hear me?" John said. "What happened last night?"

Sherlock crossed the room and reclaimed his place in his own chair.

"Sit down John." He said quietly.

John hovered over to his chair, feeling like a child being called before a headmaster. He almost smiled, but something in the exhausted seriousness of Sherlock's posture struck him with the same vein of somberness.

"You don't remember anything that happened last night, correct?" Sherlock asked; his fingers folded in front of him officiously.

"No." John had to force himself to hold back the sarcastic 'Sir.'

"Would you believe me if I told you that you spent most of last night in the presence of Moriarty?" Sherlock said in the same quiet, emotionless tone.

A cold fist of fear clutched John's heart. His heart responded by doubling its leisurely tempo to a fevered jogging pace. His mind raced through its immediate memories, only finding nothing reassuring and spinning into a panic. He realized that he was saying nothing and the pause was becoming awkward, but his mouth felt unreliable. He took a deep breath and rolled his thoughts back to a crisp winter night standing by a glimmering pool beneath the thick layers of a winter coat and bulky blocks strapped to his vest. It all seemed so… divorced somehow from his headache and amnesia.

"I don't know… maybe." He said truthfully.

Sherlock eased back in his chair, subtle twitches of anxiety rippling beneath the surface of his face. John's fear exploded quietly, eliminating the infrastructure of his inner security and killing the joy he'd felt early that morning.

"Why?" He pressed, "What happened?"

"Does your head still ache?" Sherlock casually slipped, eyes searching for confirmation, eating John's insecurity and shocked expression with a subtle relish. John wordlessly placed his hand over the raised lump on his head, his face frozen in a mixture of awe and fear.

"Would you think me mad…?" Sherlock started, lulled over the term fancifully and then drove onward to his conclusion. "…If I said you spent most of last night as a toddler?"

John sat paralyzed, struck dumb by the question. His instinctive reaction was to say "Yes, absolutely." But something halted his initial reaction, the faint recollection of a small boy covered in red sauce sitting at the coffee table. He realized, with a detached sense of embarrassment that his mouth was hanging open. Then, suddenly all of the circuits in his mind clicked and he made the pivotal connection.

"Oh."

Sherlock sank back, his sanity was defended, his hypothesis correct, his fears confirmed.

"Yes John, 'oh.'" He said hungrily preparing the next question, trying to keep it from sounding too accusing.

"So, could you tell me why Moriarty has been texting me, telling me he knows about _my_ toddler experience?"

John studied his knees, feeling very, very much like a child called into a headmaster's office. There was a right answer, and he knew it. He just was finding it hard to say it. Sherlock would no longer doubt him, and that was a big relief, but now he would have to face his deceit.

"I should've told you sooner…"

"_Yes,_ you _should've!_" Sherlock boomed causing John to jump. The excuses he'd been building neatly collapsed and withered inside of him.

"Do you realize a murderer is more upfront to Moriarty than you've been to me?" Sherlock said sourly. "What does that say about us?"

John clenched his teeth. "You wouldn't have believed me before today."

"Maybe not." Sherlock snapped, "But at least I would've been prepared when I found a baby where my flat mate used to be. _A baby, John!_"

"Alright!" John said, the knot on his head rocking with the force of the blood being squeezed through the inflamed flesh.

"What was I supposed to do with a baby John?" Sherlock ranted throwing his hands up and leaping to his feet. "I can't care for it, I can't handle it!"

"Excuse me?" John said angrily, "If you found me, why did I end up with Moriarty for most of yesterday? That's what you said, didn't you? What, did you just leave me lying around until he took me off of your hands?"

Sherlock froze, stunned. "It wasn't like that."

"That's what it sounded like." John finished coldly.

"Well that's not what happened."

"Then tell me what happened!" John shouted, flinging himself out of his chair. "Tell me why I'm missing the rear end of yesterday! Why my head hurts! Why I'm missing clothes! What happened with Moriarty?"

Sherlock frowned, glancing down at the rug. For the second time he muttered "Sit down, John."

John was ready to protest when the doorbell rang. They shared a brief look of _oh-what-now_ and both marched primly downstairs to answer the bell.


	44. Nudists

**This is by far the best dialouge I have ever written. Just wait, you'll see.**

* * *

The short, frustration-worn face of Detective Inspector Lestrade was nearly as gray and grim as the weather, and he looked irked at the notion of spending anytime at all standing on the doorstop of 221b, much less the minute it took to answer the door.

"Are these yours?" He asked holding up a plastic evidence bag stuffed with a black long-sleeve shirt and a pair of dark blue jeans that John instantly recognized as one of his missing pairs. He also noticed his missing pair of boxers and made a conscious effort to arrest the urge to blush. His collar felt hot.

"Look, I can't be bothered with the comings-and-goings of your own cases," Lestrade said looking over his shoulder at the parked squad car where an impatient Sgt. Donovan was flipping through a case file furiously. "But this is the second time your clothes have been found at the scene of a break in at a lab. Now tell me: _what is going on_?"

John felt as though his mouth was filled with cotton and he tenderly grasped the package of his clothes, as though they would turn to dust if he gripped too tightly. He was at a total loss for either words or ideas.

Luckily Sherlock was a master at improvisation. He nudged John out of the way and confronted the Detective Inspector with a cheery smile and tone.

"It's simple Detective Inspector," He said much too loudly, flashing his white teeth. "John and I are becoming nudists. Have a nice day." And with that he shut the door curtly.

"_Sherlock!_" John exclaimed in horror, stifling the urge to burst into exasperated laughter.

"What? Now he won't ask questions." Sherlock said with a shrug.

"Or ever talk to us again!" John shouted in a whisper. "What were you thinking?"

"Well I had to say something." Sherlock said urbanely.

John tucked his package beneath his arm and followed his flat mate upstairs, nerves tugging on the edges of a complete meltdown. He breathed deeply through his nose and whistled through his mouth, chanting "Don't Panic" like a Zen meditation.

Sherlock pointed John to his chair and he took it, feeling happy to be within the familiar confines of its leathery folds. Sherlock took his chair, sitting in it cross legged and stroking his fists.

"Last night." Sherlock started abruptly, "You were turned into a toddler sometime between when I left you to keep watch over the hallway and when I returned about twenty minutes later. Moriarty picked you up shortly before I arrived, and I gave chase forcing him to drop _a_ toddler. Not you. Moran, presumably."

John stared at Sherlock, the irony of his dialogue harassing his already-startled mind like a cat hanging over a bird's cage. What were the odds that, just as he had taken Moriarty home upon his transformation, Moriarty had accidentally taken him. Was it more than just coincidence?

"I kept Moran as ballast and offered Moriarty a trade which his gratuitously accepted." Sherlock continued blankly.

"But then what happened to your head?"

"I'm getting there." Sherlock growled rolling his shoulders nervously.

"Moriarty left you downstairs, and before he left with Moran I went to collect you... and Baker Street had a visitor." Sherlock paused.

John found himself at the edge of his seat. Sherlock always delivered a narrative as one might write a police report: blandly and without dramatic embellishments. John was supposed to be the fancy storyteller with his blog, as he had been so often reminded. Sherlock never paused for effect. There must have been another reason.

"The real Dr. Genil visited to state that our services were no longer required."

"He attacked you?" John pressed.

Sherlock traced the ridge of his bruise tentatively. "Yes. With intent to kill. I confronted him with the information I had gathered thus far about his relation to Willa Erdrich, and he confirmed my theories most emphatically."

"What happened then?"

"Nothing."

John stared at Sherlock in muted disbelief. Sherlock sighed and clarified.

"Genil escaped after I was knocked unconscious and Moriarty left the flat with Moran. Later that night I received a text stating that Moran had been re-masculinized and I…fell asleep."

John nodded.

"What happened to the kitchen then?" he asked.

Sherlock grimaced, wincing at the memory, willing himself not to turn around and look.

"I _hate children_ John." He stated with a cold passion. "I _hate them._"

"Right…" John said, not entirely understanding. Then again, what else was new?

Sherlock sat hunched on his chair, boring into John with his icy eyes. John realized with a cold sting of regret that he was waiting for John's untold half of the story, which he related in short.

"Unbelievable." Sherlock finally mused, hands steepled over his knees.

"That's what I was worried about." John said. "I still have your shredded baby clothes if you need proof?"

Sherlock batted away the suggestion with a sweep of his hand.

"It sounds like a work of fiction." He said into his hands. "Like we're some poor passing for a Jekyll-Hyde potion tale."

"But it's real." John said. "I just keep telling myself that it's real and that keeps me going. Keeps me from feeling…"

"Crazy." Sherlock finished his sentence.

"No," John said "I still feel crazy, but at least I'm not wrong."

Sherlock grinned into his knees. "You're only crazy if you're wrong."


	45. Interloper

**Dramatic POV change! Suspense building! Mystery gatering! Short chapters have POWER!**

* * *

One eye clamped shut, the other squinting through the glass telescope, a man with horse-like yellow teeth picked up the bulky old phone sitting placidly beside him, never looking away from the scene he was spying on.

As soon as he heard the earpiece stop ringing, he whispered into the phone: "Two men. One blond, one brunette, both sitting in chairs, so I can't tell the height. What now?"

He almost dropped the phone when he heard the hiss of: "Retreat. Await further orders."

He almost protested, but hesitated just long enough to save himself. The voice on the other end hung up.

He was admittedly peeved. He'd been sitting up half the night in a frigid, dusty old building without any air conditioning or blankets. His flimsy orange sweater was all he had to keep the clinging heat from seeping away from his shivering body. His one hope had been the thrill of bloodlust; after all he was using a telescopic sight to stalk a pair of detectives.

He swore mightily, safely assuming that no one would hear him in the ancient abandoned apartment and packed his things in a fury, contenting himself in the knowledge that at least he would have a full bank account when he got home.


	46. Traitor

John swept the kitchen floor and using a clean rag scrubbed the cabinets free of their pasty smudge. Sherlock strolled in and out of his room carrying garbage, Mrs. Hudson's vacuum, and his linens; all the while ranting about the horrors of caring for the two-year-old monster. John caught snippets of the night's events, such as: "…My beaker, two months of fermentation turned to baby formula in an instant…All over the floor…My _bed_, John…All over my sheets…" and so on.

When John finished he stepped back and opened the refrigerator door, marveling at his handiwork. The fridge was clean and mold-free for the first time since they had moved in, the floors shone without their thick cloak of dust and the wood on the cabinets was actually brown, as opposed to the grey-maroon color they had become accustomed to.

Sherlock continued to walk in and out of his ruined room for some time, carting cardboard boxes and broken glass to the bin for disposal and continuing his rant about the horrors of children.

John decided that since Sherlock wasn't actually paying any attention to him, he could sneak up to his room and check on something that had been niggling at the back of his mind since Sherlock had mentioned Moriarty.

He quietly ascended the stairs to his room, feeling once again dirty for moving in circles behind Sherlock's back. His room opened up to him again and this time he saw the method in the disorganization: The systematic disruption of his drawers, the pilfering of his pants, and then the movement from his drawers to the large chest at the end of his bed.

He knelt down beside his chest and undid the golden latch, throwing open the lid in mute apprehension. The books and papers inside had been pulled up and then thrown together when whoever had been searching through his precious possessions hadn't found what they'd wanted. The pages lay limp and open like the twisted wings of doves and the medical papers he had carefully printed and read were torn from their staples and tossed together in a mash.

John closed the lid heavily. He didn't need to look any closer to see the wanton destruction, the brief view had told him enough. There was only one thing more he needed to see.

He crawled to his nearby closet and opened the door, peering into the darkness by the shaft of light and straining to see past his shoes.

He owned four pairs of shoes, some of which he'd had since college, and these he had used to carefully conceal the barrel of the sniper's rifle, hiding the rest of the elegant black weapon beneath a cleverly overturned suitcase. All of his shoes had now been swept to the side and his suitcase was standing righted, leaving the floor entirely bare.

The Von Herder was gone.

John touched his bruise. The Von Herder had been used, to Sherlock's knowledge, in no less than three dozen homicides. If it could be dusted for prints, the Von Herder could be used to connect Sebastian Moran with dozens of other crimes, including larceny, blackmail, and assault on a famous politician. If it could be subject to ballistic tests, it could solve those three dozen homicides and probably many, many 'suicides.' If he had it, he had a direct link to Sebastian Moran.

The Von Herder was _gone._

John sat down and sighed. He was never going to tell Sherlock about having it. The best time to tell him would've been the morning after Sherlock's transformation instead of smuggling it up to his bedroom behind his flat mate's back. Now it was too late.

"Traitor." John said to himself. He winced as the word twisted like a knife in his belly. _Traitor_. Sherlock had trusted him to help catch Moran, and he had betrayed him. The impulse was strong just to run down to Sherlock's room, knock the cleaning supplies out of his hands and tell him everything. He had already relieved himself of most of the burden, just a bit more wouldn't hurt. He could come completely clean, and not have to worry about keeping secrets anymore, or Moriarty blabbing about those secrets when his back was turned.

John picked himself off the floor, feeling filthy and hating himself for bothering to keep the story of Sherlock's time as a toddler to himself. It had only cost them the chance to grab Moran and get close to Moriarty. That would've been one villain down, and one headache dealt with.

But telling Sherlock about the Von Herder at any time would require relating how he had gotten it, and he was still unable to lie to him.

Withholding information, however, appeared to be a separate notion entirely.

* * *

**20,000 veiws?! Woo hoo! Thanks guys! **


	47. Ashes

**Even though Jim is not the main antagonist, he's still an antagonist. A tiger can't change his stripes.**

**P.S. The Chapter "nudists" had an extra three paragraphs added to it before I submitted it, or so I thought. The stupid file didn't save, so I'll be adding those paragraphs when I do my next update. Yes, they are that important!**

* * *

Morning broke with Jim crouching on top of his table, hunched over his precious map like a massive bird of prey and Sebastian snoozing lightly in his chair; a still-lit cigarette threatening to dump it's log of smoldering grey ash onto his bare neck as he snored and smoked, snored and smoked, puffing dreamily on his short white cigarette oblivious to its mortality drawing quickly to a close.

"I hate this man Moran." Jim muttered for the hundredth time that night. He no longer expected an answer and was content to be left alone with his loathing.

"He's just a normal person. I _hate _him." He said empathetically. Sebastian sent a jet of curling smoke swirling from his nose.

"He should be dead by morning, but that isn't enough for me." Jim slurred, wiping the sleep from his eyes with the end of the black marker he still clutched in his hand.

"I want him to suffer for making me stutter. I want him to cry for making me sweat. Do you understand?" Jim turned to his partner in crime, and maliciously tapped the still-burning ash onto his bare skin. Sebastian awoke screaming.

"Pay attention when I'm talking to you." Jim said primly as Sebastian splashed cold water from the rusty sink over his fresh burns.

"But you talk _so much!_" Sebastian teased tenderly, assaulting his raw skin with pelts of icy water, chasing the vein before it pooled in his shirt as a dark stain.

He wiped his neck with a damp cloth and became suddenly sober and serious. "What've you decided?"

Jim turned back to his map and decided he was sick of looking at it. It compelled him to physical nausea. He crumpled it into a small roll and let it drop to the floor.

"We have the upper hand over Holmes. If Genil is working off the grid, he's on our home turf. It shouldn't take too long for them to betray him."

Jim grinned. "Betray him to us."

Sebastian nodded grimly.

"Sherlock will approach the situation with caution, as he has no antidote for…whatever it is."

"And we do." Added Sebastian, not wanting his little triumph to go to waste.

"And we do." Agreed Jim.

"So we wait?"

"So we wait." parroted Jim.

Sebastian silently went to the refrgerator and removed an ice cube, rubbing it all over his neck, burns, and making small circuts down his chest for fun.

"This is my least favorite part of any job." He paused and considered his position while continuing to ice his scalded flesh.

"All jobs." He added.

"Bite me." Jim said. "And be at the Rio Bellisima Hotel before 11'o clock. You'll be shooting into the Ritz Guillermo across the street, fourth window from the left, fourth story."

Sebastian let the instructions sink in mutely. "You mean after all of that I don't even get a day off?" he asked incredulously.

"Patence Moran." Jim said grinning. "Business goes on as usual. We can't allow our quary to retain the upper hand, and the best way to stay on top is to emerse ourselves in our business."

Sebastian frowned. It was easy for Jim to contemplate 'emersion,' his work was all on phones and computers. When it came right down to it Sebastian was the one who was steeped in the crime, sometimes to the point where he felt it was over his head.

He peered at the breifcase hurriedly deposited in the corner, the Von Herder neatly folded in its velvety case at last; and he broke into a wide grin.

He wouldn't have it any other way.


	48. Anything At All

**Couldn't find the file, so I just made this a whole new chapter. Spiffy idn't it? Next update: Oh Brother Where Art Thou?**

* * *

John eased himself back into his chair, feeling freer than he had in some weeks. He finally had a comrade to share his worries and fears with. He felt better knowing that Sherlock had taken control of the situation. He had a way of making one feel safe and secure just with his mere presence alone.

"Anything at all John; the slightest detail could tie all of the pieces together for us."

He pinched the bridge of his nose and concentrated. He knew what was at stake, he knew what Sherlock wanted, but for the life of him he couldn't produce anything from the day before.

Except…no, it couldn't be? Could it?

Sherlock sat hunched forward in his chair, every muscle in his neck tight and a-quiver with eager energy. John had something, and like a hound on the scent Sherlock knew.

"It could be nothing whatever." John warned, but Sherlock had been in business long enough to know anything was important. Anything at all.

"I just… have this feeling." John started sheepishly. "Like, I don't know…It's so familiar."

"Familiar?" Sherlock's veins jutted out of his sinewy neck. They were all John could focus on as he reached back through his memory.

He slid his thoughts over the empty space in his memory as one might slide their hand over a wooden table, smooth and undefined wood passing beneath his finger with no breaks, no clear patterns, nothing.

And then something. A crack in the wood. Nostalgia. The sensation of remembrance without any definition, any form, any memory.

"Do you know that feeling you might get...?" John started once he thought he might have found the words to describe his odd mental state. "…when you told yourself that you want to remember something, and you remember telling yourself that you wanted to remember something, but you can't recall what it is that you want to remember?"

He looked up at Sherlock who studied him with a worried, curious expression.

"Of course you don't." John said dismally. "You're Sherlock."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

John batted the question away with a brisk wave of his hand. "It's nothing; I told you it was nothing."


	49. Hostilities

**Beginning of Part The Third: O Brother Where Art Thou. It looks as though there'll be four parts to this Childish Epic, Part 1: What've I done, Part 2: Turning Tables, Part 3: O Brother Where Art Thou, and Part Four: Yet to be announced. **

**That should give my loyal readers something to look forward to, and those reading this for the first time an incintive to click the follower button. Although, if you were just browsing and read this far, I salute you.**

**If you skipped ahead, for shame! :) **

* * *

Mycroft fixed his stubborn brother with a hard glare, and Sherlock reflected his aggravation in a glassy stare right back at him.

John hunched over his bowl of fruit protectively and waited for the bombs to start flying.

"It its _top secret_, Sherlock."

"So naturally everybody knows, _Mycroft._"

"It would be an unpardonable breach of my position."

"So you would rather let him escape, _let a murderer escape, _than send me his files."

"There is no proof, other than your hearsay, suggesting Willa Erdrich is anywhere other than Fiji."

"She's not in Fiji, she never went to Fiji: the woman who used that plane ticket got in contact with me and told me a man matching Genil's description gave it to her." Sherlock was standing and every formidable inch of him was quivering with indignity.

"Listen to yourself; you can see it just as well as I can. You act as though you can't but _you can!_"

Mycroft's expression soured almost unperceivably.

"Genil is a murderer with an unbelievable chemical weapon at his disposal." Sherlock said. His voice was low and deep, which made his brother listen closely. "He's defected from the British government. Even you can tell that much."

Mycroft frowned noticeably now; his eyes roved the floor as he tried to frame the truth in an acceptable manner for his excitable sibling.

"I am well aware of the Genil situation, but the fact of the matter is that his research is secretive on a level which parallels Baskerville." He chewed on his words, observing the hungry gleam in Sherlock's eyes and the cold realization that his brother knew how far his clearance went in government.

God save him.

"Only a select few are granted the privileged knowledge of his work, and I am not one of them." Mycroft finished primly, clearly, and with a rap of his umbrella point on the hard wooden floor as proper punctuation.

"Yes you are." Sherlock insisted quietly. His words had much more force when they snuck up noiselessly and jumped out to bite at one's throat. Mycroft was quite at a loss for words.

"No…I'm not." He repeated persistently, dreading the inevitable comeback.

"Yes you are." Sherlock said louder, confidence flowing into his words. "Don't try to lie to me brother mine, you know who I am. You know _it doesn't work_."

Mycroft shot Sherlock a strict warning glance, but like all of his other expressions it was maliciously ignored.

"Genil received payment for twelve months from 'the British government' but specifically his checks were made out to Genil via 'accounting.'"

Mycroft cringed internally. He had made a rather severe blunder some year ago describing his position in government to his brother as being that of a 'glorified accountant.' It was true, only in that the things he accounted usually did not involve pounds or pence, rather political trends and terrorists plots.

Sherlock saw the cringe, saw the panic and saw the error and he lingered over his victory of the words, twisting the knife joyfully.

"Wasn't that your position? Accounting?"

John looked up from his snack confused. How could someone in _accounting_ have access to Baskerville? Why would someone in _accounting_ have access to CCTV cameras? But one look at the expressions of the brothers Holmes was enough to send him back to studying his fruit. Their hostilities had floated to the surface.


	50. Drop the Investigation

"Accounting is not simply me, Sherlock. You're mistaken." Mycroft growled.

"But you do have the access!" Sherlock seized the opportunity to twist Mycroft's words. "You have the ability to help us!"

"Drop the investigation and save yourself the trouble." Mycroft snapped.

Sherlock stared at him in shock. He could not have appeared more surprised if Mycroft had reached out and slapped him in the face.

"Drop…" he repeated his words dumbly, as if they had failed to compute. "…the investigation?"

Mycroft nodded grimly. He felt that he had made a mistake, but he stood his ground and prepared for Sherlock's counter attack.

"You would rather let a killer get away. You really would." Sherlock chuckled darkly. "I don't know why I'm surprised. You want me to give up. That is just like you."

John glanced up, anticipating the war turning nuclear. "Hang on." He said clearly.

In a flash both sets of eyes had pinned him to the couch with their sharp animosities.

"Well, we can't really stop investigating. Genil is trying to kill us. The only thing we can do is try and arrest him before he gets us." He said as neutrally as he could.

"What makes you think Genil is a threat to _you_?"Mycroft practically spat. For almost anybody else, his response would have seemed mild, however it was the most uncouth John had ever seen the prim, starch-suited man.

Sherlock shot daggers with his eyes. John could instantly tell that he'd made a serious mistake, but he was too far along to quit. Mycroft seemed to be asking "Well?" with every passing moment, daring John to lie. Besides, if Mycroft was really concerned with Sherlock's safety, 'worrying constantly' then the easiest way to break down his reluctance was to dive right in, really.

"He attacked…us." John said, considering whether or not Mycroft would know about the effects of Genil's chemical weapon. He decided to leave it out just in case, and hoped that the man's eagle eyes wouldn't pick apart the bits he was withholding and interpret them as lies.

Mycroft's head snapped back to Sherlock. "Did he?"

Sherlock had begun to say no, the phrase was on the tip of his tongue when he noticed Mycroft's eyes alight on something above his eye, no doubt the yellow smear of a bruise that was all that had remained from the butt of Genil's gun crashing upon his head.

He said nothing.

Mycroft's phone buzzed urgently in his pocket. He pulled it out and put it to his ear and gave Sherlock the look he loathed, that look which said "I'll finish with you later."

"Yes?" Mycroft answered the phone.

"No. Please wait one moment." He walked out of the flat, downstairs and into the street where his car was waiting patiently for him to finish with personal business so that he could attend to _real_ business. He clambered inside and his personal assistant handed him his laptop, which had already been primed for the business he had to convey over the phone.

"One moment, I'll have it to you via e-mail in just a few seconds." He said as calmly as possible, though in his mind he was split between his business and the troubling conflict his brother had just presented him.

Why didn't he see the massive bruise on his brother's face when he must have first received it? Why didn't it show up as part of the security briefing? It wasn't called Active Grade Three Surveillance for nothing.

It took ten minutes to finish his correspondence with another government's 'accounting' agent, but when he finished he received a text stating that his request for the rest of the days' vacation had been queued and accepted.

He would probably spend it composing a few more documents for submission into the permanent international terrorist network again, just as he had the last time he had a day off.

It was a good thing his job was so soothing.

He closed his laptop before another message requesting his assistance could be processed and handed it to his assistant, who took it like one who is accustomed to taking unpleasant things.

"The Diogenes, Sir?" she asked.

"No. I have not yet finished with my brother. Keep the car running for me, it won't take long." He said, immediately regretting his rash words. He felt as though he'd jinxed himself diving into a conversation with his brother.

He pocketed his phone and walked past a man in a hideously green cashmere sweater glancing up at the windows of 221b.

"Is this where that detective lives?" The man said in a garish American accent.

"Yes, however he is out at the moment." Mycroft said letting himself into the house and leaving the confused man to muddle out his problems on his own.

* * *

**The thing I hate the most: when nothing really happens in a chapter.**

**The other thing I hate the most is when the wrong thing happens.**

**This is both. ARGH!**


	51. A Flush Of Horror

It was seventeen steps from the ground to the first floor of the flat, and Mycroft had to stop climbing less than halfway up. He felt dizzy as he pulled out his handkerchief and soaked up the beads of sweat that had erupted across his forehead.

Was he sick? If so, it was the perfect day for it. He had felt fine coming up the stairs just a few minutes before.

His skin felt too tight, like a mask pulled over his bones. He continued up the stairs doggedly, cradling the grim hope that if he collapsed, John would know what to do.

By the seventeenth step, however, his brief fit had faded and he felt a cool relief. He felt all the bliss of emerging from a smoky room into the brisk spring breeze.

He straightened his already-smooth suit and prepared himself for battle, rolling his shoulders and stock-piling good, solid facts to bolster his opinion on not divulging government secrets to his detective brother.

He opened the door and was met with dismal emptiness. Sherlock had left the room.

He turned to ask John where he had gone and jumped in alarm. John was gone. All that remained of the doctor was the bowl of cherries and a toddler that could have been his perfect likeness folded into the green jacket John had been wearing.

Mycroft stared at the child, who was sleeping mildly in the exact spot where John had been sitting merely ten minutes previously. He was at a loss for an explanation.

"Sherlock?" He called into the flat. Surely Sherlock knew whose boy was sitting on their sofa.

A whimper beside the window caused another frightened recoil as Mycroft identified a smear of blue fabric tossed haphazardly across the floor as Sherlock's blue dressing gown. It was laid out smooth with a bulge at its center indicating the presence of something underneath. The bulge twisted slightly.

Mycroft crept cautiously over to the thing, balancing lightly on his toes, anticipating one of his brother's heinous, poorly timed pranks. The contents beneath the dressing gown could be varied, from a balloon to a small dog; but regardless of the nature of the prank, one thing was assured, that it was meant to annoy and distract him.

He gently picked up the fabric with his fingertips, preparing to either run, or express his extreme displeasure. In one swift, theatrical sweep of his arm he pulled the cover off of…another child.

This child could've been Sherlock's perfect likeness, with the wild black curls and the adorable thumb sucking. The night shirt Sherlock had been wearing was draped around the boy like a skirt, and the pajama pants were bunched beneath the shirt.

Mycroft stood up to appraise the situation. The flat had been set up to appear as though Sherlock and John had simply shrunk into the children he saw before him, perhaps by magic or more likely Genil's mad science experiment gone awry, becoming too small for their clothes and fainting from, oh, maybe shock.

But of course, that was impossible.

"Very immature." Mycroft said loudly. The two toddlers stirred and the one curled at his feet whimpered again, shuddering and pulling the night shirt up around his thin shoulders like a thin blanket.

Mycroft ducked into the flat's kitchen and gazed around. He wouldn't put it past Sherlock to hide beneath a cabinet for the sake of a prank, even at his age. He checked them all and found only chemical equipment, a tub of homemade chloroform, and a few pots and pans.

It was possible that Sherlock had taken the shelves out of the fridge and as hiding in there, so Mycroft checked. There was nothing but a man's head.

He closed the fridge in horror, took a deep breath and looked again, just to check and make sure it was no one he knew. It wasn't.

With the kitchen done, and his two mischievous charges still unaccounted for he was faced for the first time with the grim possibility that the prank might be serious.

He laughed it off lightly and, still chuckling, went to investigate Sherlock's room.

Under the bed, in the closet and down the fire escape there was no sign of the two detectives, but Mycroft did find something unlikely, and unsupportive: a child-sized two piece suit shoved haphazardly into a drawer at random, but complete with underpants, socks, and after a bit of searching, black dress shoes. It was a suit that strongly resembled something Sherlock might wear, only toddler sized.


	52. Not Amused

"This is becoming exceedingly childish!" Mycroft announced peevishly. The prank was beginning to grow old. He had appointments to keep and this was his first half-day off in weeks. The sun had already begun to set, and yet he was nowhere near the Diogenes club where he liked to take his evenings.

He picked up the suit and its accompanying ensemble and tossed it into a chair nearby. He felt the eyes of the toddler meant to represent John Watson following him and briskly ignored him, heading upstairs for the most logical hiding place: John's bedroom.

Thunk, thunk, thunk; his footsteps were heavy and loud as he charged up the stairs to John's bedroom. He wanted Sherlock to know how aggravated he was beforehand; it would give him time to plan.

Slam! He flung open John's bedroom door and gazed around, searching for a sign of interrupted life. He found none, not that Sherlock would leave him any clues. He ducked down and looked under the bed, he shot across the room furiously and rifled through the closet, he even checked the drawers to search for a crawl space cut into the wood. There was only one place left to look: the chest at the end of John's bed.

Bang! He threw it open, clinging to the hope that both flatmates had somehow fitted themselves inside, squeezed together where there would have been barely enough room for one. The chest was filled, almost to the brim with papers, books, notebooks and binders all neatly organized and stacked in the prim, almost obsessive order of a soldier.

Lying on top of the books and papers was another set of children's clothes, a black and white striped shirt with a blue puppy stitched on the front and sensible blue pants. In the chest also were socks, small sneakers and a pair of startlingly red underpants.

Mycroft gathered all of the clothes and drew a handful of conclusions. First was that Sherlock had picked the clothes out for John based on the clothes he'd seen John wear before. Second, he was meant to find the clothes because he was meant to clothe the toddlers. Third, Sherlock and John were nowhere in the flat. It was likely that they could have hidden in Mrs. Hudson's flat while she was with her sister in Cornwall, but for some reason the thought did not sit right.

"I am no longer amused!" He announced.


	53. Baker Street Daycare

He crept back down the stairs to the sitting room of the flat, hoping that when he arrived, Sherlock and John would be laughing about how they had slunk down to Mrs. Hudson's flat without Mycroft's notice and successfully tricked him into searching their whole flat.

To what end, however, he couldn't imagine.

The only change in the sitting room, however, seemed to be that the child meant to represent John Watson had deemed it a fair time for a nap, and had collapsed into a heap on the sofa.

Mycroft sneered with displeasure; already seeing what script his brother had envisioned him to play out. He was meant to clothe the toddlers in their respective little outfits, the suit for the little boy who appeared to be Sherlock and the black and white striped jumper for the little boy who appeared to be John. If he did that, it would prove that he had been convinced that they had transformed into toddlers.

A thought struck him suddenly, and threatened to derail his entire logical assumption that his brother was playing a cruel prank on him: _Where would he have gotten the children from?_

Even Sherlock would not stoop so low as to kidnap, yet Mycroft could not envision the woman who, having met Sherlock, would trust him with the safety and well-being of her young boys. It was possible that he had employed John to charm someone into offering their children for an hour, but would the doctor go along with a pre-planned prank? He seemed to be more of a spur-of-the-moment type fool. Perhaps John would be hiding with Sherlock, but he probably would not have worked out the prank ahead of time with him.

No, the children resembled the two flat mates exactly. Mycroft had a picture of Sherlock from that age hanging in his home that he would glance at from time to time, and the likeness was precise. Clearly the bored detective had premeditated these exact children for his exact purpose, but the likelihood that he could not only find two duplicates of he and his flat mate, but also borrow them from their parents was so slim as to seem impossible.

At least, Mycroft would have heard if they were planning to open a Baker Street Day care.


	54. Trusting

He scoffed again at the idiotic notion that continuously bloomed in his mind, the absurd idea that they had truly been shrunk.

It was while scoffing thus he waltzed through the towering piles of junk and scooped up the little-Sherlock, nightshirt and all, and bundled him in the thin make-shift blanket.

The little boy opened his eyes, surely saw himself in the presence of a stranger, but oddly only gripped onto Mycroft's jacket and returned to his snooze.

"Trusting, aren't you?" Mycroft said, his senses screaming at him in alarm.

The normal reaction for a child when introduced to a strange adult was to panic and seek their parent. This child was either too sleepy, or too careless to try. _Or Mycroft wasn't a stranger._


	55. Irrational

Mycroft placed the child on the sofa beside the little-John and had difficulties unclenching the small, soft hands from his jacket-pocket. When he'd finally freed himself, he had the sense that the only way to pull Sherlock out of his hiding place would be not to play the game.

He was free from the toddler's grip, if he could only break free of his brother's prank he could lose the irrational streak that had swollen inside of his mind. He could leave 221b and his brother would surely text him to tell him how heartless he was, but at least then they could open a circuit of communication above being deigned sitter for a few babes.

The only trouble with this was that the irrational streak cautioned him against it. It was erroneous to make judgments based on something he'd already deemed superfluous, yet still, his pride recoiling in disgust, he reached for the black and white jumper while touching the little-John on the cheek.


	56. Arms Up

The toddler stirred and gave Mycroft a glance over, face squished into an expression which noiselessly asked "What's all this, then?"

"Arms up." Mycroft demanded.

John frowned at him, arms crossed beneath the jacket.

"Arms up." Mycroft repeated sternly.

John continued to frown and aggressively did nothing.

Mycroft crossed his arms, gave the little boy a hard look and his best disapproving glare he saved for when Sherlock nicked his ID.

"Arms. Up." He said dangerously.

John decided the funny man in the suit was not playing and slowly his fingertips went skyward. He slipped out of the over-sized jacket, which fell down around his waist.

Mycroft jumped the toddler and shoved his head through the jumper before he had time to scream. The arms took some maneuvering, but eventually they emerged as well.

"Next." He said reaching for the underpants.

He froze in mid-air, suddenly realizing the other fact about this prank that had unnerved and confused him.

It was illegal to 'borrow someone's children, but it was extremely illegal to borrow and disrobe someone's children. Even Sherlock knew that much. He would not stoop so low, nor break the law in that fashion simply for a prank.

Yet here he was, Mycroft Holmes slipping underpants onto the toddler John. If it was someone else's kid, it was illegal. _But if it was John, he might not have been able to help it._


	57. Moment of Weakness

Mycroft let the child sit for a moment; the pants would come after he had finished his dizzy spell. He stood up and, horrified, he backed slowly away from the couch where the two toddlers sat, the little-Sherlock curled into a heap and snoozing lightly and the little-John watching Mycroft's cool easy demeanor collapse and vanish, replaced by terror and repulsion.

He collapsed into a chair and buried his face in his hands, breathing deeply, and forcing air into his lungs when all he wanted to do was tremble and choke.

"Pull together." He said quietly to himself.

"Impossible." He reminded himself.

"My brother." He pointed out to himself.

Just like that the episode had ended; he sat up straight with a clear head. The conclusions he'd come to were clearly false, because it is impossible for grown men to shrink into toddlers and the only reason he'd been tricked into believing something that absurd was because it was Sherlock's wit he was matching. Sherlock was the only person who could fool him.

Thus, his logical mind reinforced he returned to the task appointed to him and put the young toddler that appeared to be, but couldn't be John into the pants.

* * *

**If we all had this ability, no one would ever have adventures.**


	58. theimprobableone

Thus, his logical mind reinforced he returned to the task appointed to him and put the young toddler that appeared to be, but couldn't be John into the pants.

There was something the little boy must have found funny about this action, because he squealed in joyous laughter.

"What on earth could be so humorous right now," Mycroft paused and prepared his sarcasm so it could drip from his next phrase. "Dr. Watson?"

The little boy laughed harder and kicked his legs. Luckily Mycroft had just finished with his pants and left the boy to his own devices turning to the little-Sherlock with a twinkle of mirth in his cold gray eyes.

"And how about you, Sherlock?" His voice oozed sarcasm, sarcasm squelched at every turn of phrase. "A suit today? Or will you stay in your dressing gown and night shirt?"

Mycroft felt quite giddy with himself for playing along with the foolish prank, it was certain to rankle on his brother's nerves.

The little-Sherlock was awake now, but had no desire to sit up, nor move. He watched Mycroft coming for him motionlessly and quietly accepted the gentle, mocking touches as Mycroft slid him out of the night shirt, slipped on the underpants and eased him into the suit pants he'd taken from his room.

Finally Mycroft maneuvered the button-up shirt around the toddler, swathing him in the pearl-white, soft fabric which was really too silken to keep from wrinkling and working the buttons nimbly from the bottom up.

Little-Sherlock watched this work eagerly, scoping out his prey and patiently quelling his desire until Mycroft had approached the last button. Then, when his fingers drifted too close, Sherlock's mouth shot out and surrounded the absently floating ring finger, seizing the knuckle with his teeth gently and beginning to pulsate, wrapping it in the warm undulating of his tongue.

Mycroft froze, his mouth dropped open as the small boy sucked on his finger. He left the last button unfastened and gaped absently, thankful no one was nearby to see him.

A sudden acceptance of the fact that his brother and friend had been turned into children dropped over his mind like a warm, slightly stifling blanket. There was no fear, no horror. It was quite simply a fact.

He had eliminated the improbable, that his brother could obtain children, that his brother could obtain children that resembled him entirely, and that his brother could find a child that not only looked like him, but also had the same infant quirk of sucking on fingers as he had until the age of three; and now what remained was the impossible truth: Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were children.


	59. Merely How

Mycroft let Sherlock take his finger for a moment, because, quite frankly, he was at a loss for what to do now that he'd accepted the prank as being a sincere problem.

He felt the first thing that needed acknowledgment was the notion of turning the two children back into men.

He had neither the resources, nor the academic know-how to address that problem as it had seized him, so for the moment he put it off to the side.

The immediate next concern was what had turned the two quarrelsome men into children. Was it something they had ingested? Something that had been injected? Something in the water? Would he have to shut down Baker Street to check?

Mycroft's eyes roved, as they often do when he is mulling over a problem, and lighted on the rat's-nest of papers pinned to Sherlock's corkboard via pins, needles, and one large amber jackknife. What truly caught his attention was the large, candid photograph of a man with a shock of black hair who appeared to be half-starved and gaunt entering a cab while looking cautiously over his shoulder in the wrong direction.

With a few pounds added to his figure, and a haircut to make him look presentable, the man would have been the spitting image of Genil from the old photo ID Mycroft had seen.

Mycroft slipped his finger from Sherlock's grasp, and Sherlock who had been clinging to his hand with both of his little paws replaced the missing digit instantly with one of his own.

Mycroft approached the maddening labyrinth of string and photos and tried to follow his brother's line of thoughts from one scarlet thread to the next, but it became increasingly twisted and interwoven. He decided upon merely gazing over the papers, when he lit on a page pulled from the internet about aerosol dispersed chemicals.

"Well, that solves the great mystery of _how_ you were changed," Mycroft said cheerfully, foraging for the anymore helpful tidbits as he spoke. "Now we merely need to change you back."

"Mary," Sherlock parroted.

"Mree," John echoed.

"Yes," Mycroft agreed absently. "Merely,"


	60. One More Place

He hovered back through the flat until he stood behind the toddlers on the couch. John had heard him and looked up at him curiously, appraising his worth, judging his safety and clenching one fist in front of his mouth defensively. Sherlock stared with a glazed look into empty space of the flat, straight ahead. Even at his age, his great mind was machinating, preparing, operating, and working at full capacity. Soon he would need a puzzle, or he would start assaulting John.

Mycroft reached out with both of his hands and placed them carefully on the children's heads. It was a trick he remembered from his childhood, when he couldn't get Sherlock to listen to him.

"I'll be right back. There is one place I haven't searched. Stay on this couch and do not move. Understand?"

Twin nods pulled his wrists forward and he released their attentions, moving reluctantly towards the entrance of the flat. He twisted around as the old forgotten doubt ate at him, but the pair of eyes that gazed up at him from the top of the gray suit and from within that soft infant face were his own. He was bound to go.


	61. Seventeen Steps

**I think this is my favorite chapter. It was just fun to write. It was also weird to read. **

* * *

Seventeen steps to the ground level of 221b Baker Street and each step brought with it a new fear and anxiety.

Step, what if Genil is hiding in Mrs. Hudson's flat.

Step, I'm not prepared to fight anyone.

Step, What if I get changed into a toddler?

Step, there will be no one to take care of Sherlock and John.

Step, there will be no one to take care of me.

Step, I still have things that must be done, I can't abandon my position.

Step, No one is prepared for my replacement.

Step, What if there is no way to change Sherlock and John back?

Step, could I raise my brother again?

Step, I wouldn't have time to care for him properly.

Step, but I couldn't send him away either.

Step, I'd have to take care of both Sherlock and John.

Step, John's family should know what had happened to him.

Step, I'll need DNA tests to prove it.

Step, I could pull a few strings. It wouldn't be the first time.

Step, I'll just have to find the antidote, surely one could be manufactured?

Step, how could I hide funding a massive research project for my own brother's cure? I'd have to report it somehow.

By the time he reached the ground floor he was sufficiently torn up and confused, but the threat of a maniac hiding in the kitchen just beyond the door at the end of the hallway silenced these superfluous fears and calmed his nerves to a gentle tingling, anticipation for action.

With one sibilant hand snaking into the darkness, he stole the black umbrella from where he had hooked it around the banister and raised it like a sword.


	62. A Useless Search

Mycroft hated the wallpaper at 221b, and he had in the past offered to have it removed or replaced, strongly hinting at its ugliness.

Now, as he crept noiselessly on the tips of his leather shoes, the pale walls adorned with darkened tendrils of grasping trees startled him constantly. He thought that each shadow was a man in hiding and each lifeless finger was attached to a hand that would grab him.

As the false alarms and little starts of terror became increasingly more irksome, he began to wonder how exactly Genil would even have gotten into Mrs. Hudson's apartment in the first place.

Sherlock wasn't a fool: soon after the Scandal involving Irene Adler, which Mrs. Hudson had, according to Sherlock's vague and angry report, been subject to assault by the American CIA agents, he had gone out and purchased several different types of locks of varying strengths. Mrs. Hudson's apartment was a veritable Fort Knox, so far as London apartments go.

As Mycroft approached the door to her flat he tested the knob by turning it slowly, barely making a sound as the parts of the knob creaked, collided, and gave. The door swung open absently.

Mycroft peered into the darkness wearily. He didn't have to have experience with London's criminal class to know that a door that is left unlocked is usually a bad sign. Either someone had broken in and left the door unlocked, or Mrs. Hudson had simply been absent minded as she left.

The kitchen hummed with little appliances and dots of red, blue and green light glared at the intruder angrily. He flipped the light switch, located conveniently by the door and winced as the little kitchen was flooded with garish fluorescent light.

It was immediately obvious that he was alone in the kitchen. A search of the adjacent living room and a cursory once-over of the woman's bedroom proved just as futile.

He was just groaning at himself for being foolish, kneading a newly developed pain in his temples and dissipating the last sliver of hope the Sherlock had been hiding from him when a loud, shrill noise startled him out of his own personal thoughts.

It took him several moments to recognize it as the familiar shriek of a child.

He strode out of Mrs. Hudson's flat, happy to escape the scent of age and cleaning products when another familiar sound from his childhood erupted from the first floor flat, the hysterical sobbing of a frightened baby boy.

The race up the steps was a blur as Mycroft flew to the aid of the toddlers he'd left alone, suddenly realizing with a surge of terror that in investigating Mrs. Hudson's apartment, he'd left the stairs open to invasion.


	63. Fear Part One

The door seemed to magically swing open as he approached, and in the next instant, as his stomach clenched sickeningly and his head spun dizzily, he absorbed the loneliness of the flat.

For a single second, the most heart stopping second Mycroft had ever experienced, the toddlers were missing. The couch was empty as he glanced over it.

Then, with the most wonderful swell of relief, he turned and found both boys standing in front of a window that looked over Baker Street clutching each other desperately.

The scene is one which the eldest Holmes will never forget, grotesque and frozen in time, like a scene from a magazine: victims standing in front of some titanic ruin and sobbing with fear and uncertainty. Sherlock had buried his face in John's shoulder, grasping the blue puppy on the front and crying fiercely with little shrieks. John's face was a mask, his screaming mouth frozen in a perfect "o" while tears ponderously glazed his wide eyes while refusing to fall down the pale, round cheeks. One of his arms was wrapped around Sherlock's shoulders, holding him close in a comforting hug, the other was held straight out in front of him and tipped with a pointed, accusing finger aimed straight at the window.

Instinct and training kicked in simultaneously, and after years of being someone's older brother Mycroft knew that the situation demanded he take charge as the first protector. He bent down and separated the two friends, scooping them in gently strong arms and gave them each a reassuring squeeze while lifting them into the air and setting them back down a few feet away where they would be protected from whatever intruder was perched at the window.


	64. Fear Part Two

**Mycroft is so hard to write. I'm not even kidding. I have no idea what he is thinking, or what he will do. Jim is unpredictable in the extreme sense, he could do anything. Mycroft is unpredictable in the opposite sense: he could do nothing. He is a man of action, not emotion. However he doesn't like action... what is he?**

* * *

Then his focus faded from the two children, so long as they were unharmed he could attend to them later, and he jumped silently over the trash and books that Sherlock had accumulated and raced to the window. He glanced around and saw nothing, but to be certain he opened the window.

"No naw, no, no, no!" John shouted anxiously peering at him from behind the security of the couch. Mycroft waved him off while leaning out the window precariously. The street was deserted except for his car which he realized, with a twinge of regret he'd left for several minutes without intending to.

The building across the street was empty and silent; there was nothing in the sky. There was nothing that would make two children weep, especially not to such a severe degree.

He brought his head back inside and shut the window with a reassuring snap, deciding that perhaps a bird had crashed into the window and frightened the two already-distressed former adults into a frenzy.

He cautiously returned to the children huddled behind the chair, satisfied that they were no longer in any danger, yet puzzled at their explosive nerves and not willing to frighten them again. He could still hear Sherlock crying out of sight.

"Sherlock?" He quietly said, fearing an answer.

The subtle sobbing ceased, and Mycroft could hear a mild rustling from out of sight behind the sofa.

"Sherlock," he repeated in a stronger, gentler tone. "John?"

He was afraid of coming too close, or too fast and starting another wave of tears, so he crept forward, as though he were trying not to set off a bomb.

John looked out from around the chair wearily. Mycroft took another deliberate step and John's face disappeared.

Mycroft was close enough to gaze over the chair and see the tops of the toddler's heads. Sherlock was busy wiping his face and John had finally let the tears that he'd been fighting fall down. Now they needed a comforter.

He could wait no longer; walking into their open view he reached down and placed a friendly hand on each shoulder. Sherlock remained frozen, his head in his small hands bowing reverentially and refusing to look Mycroft in the face.

John broke apart and collapsed onto Mycroft's knee trembling wildly and crying loudly.


	65. Convenience

After a session of back patting, kind words spoken soothingly and small meaningful hugs, neither boy was much for crying anymore and they sat sullenly reflecting on whatever episode they had survived.

Mycroft focused his efforts on ignoring the large, wet stain on his suit and encouraging physical contact, namely wrapping the two children in his arms like a bird might wrap them in its wings. John wrapped his arms as far as he could around his middle, holding Mycroft like the world's largest teddy bear. Sherlock did not look at the man, or anything else in the room; he merely looked blankly towards the wall, Mycroft's sleeve caught tightly in his little hands.

Mycroft gazed out the window and noted the time: late. He decided the Diogenes club would have to wait for another day. The mere thought hadn't occurred to him previously, but now weighed down on him heavily, like a stone resting on his heart.

"I suppose you both know that this is very inconvenient." He told the two children, stroking Sherlock's back absently with his trapped hand. "I can imagine better ways to spend my evening, so if there is any nonsense about; if you two know how to turn back into men, or if you are your adult selves in a child's body, now would be the perfect time for a confession."

John looked up at him with an expression of some alarm. Mycroft was hopeful for a moment, but all the small boy had to inform him of was the fact that he was becoming "humbwe."

"What?"

"Humbree,"

"I don't understand."

"Ham-bwe."

"You are hungry?"

"Nope,"

"Then why…oh, you _will be_ hungry soon; is that right?"

"Yeah."

Mycroft stroked the boy's hair affectionately and thought to himself "_What a remarkable temperament, and he can tell me what he wants before he wants it, I wish he had known my brother at this age, he could have used the lessons."_

What he said, to his slight surprise was: "Let us find something to eat then? Shall we?"

He abandoned John's hair and reached into his jacket pocket for his phone, he dialed for Anthea and waited.


	66. Eyes Explain Better

"Sir?"

"Anthea, I need you to come up immediately."

"You said you'd only be a minute." She accused.

"The circumstances have changed," he said pulling Sherlock a little bit closer to himself.

"Did you finally kill him?" Anthea asked in jest.

"No," Mycroft replied in a serious tone. "I need you immediately, I will explain once you are in my presence.

"Why not explain now?" Anthea asked suspiciously.

Mycroft smoothed his tone and replied casually, "My dear girl, there are some things eyes explain better than any living man ever could."

Anthea paused, in frustration, and to a much lesser degree in wonder. "I'll be right up."

The phone call ended with a click and Mycroft quietly picked up Sherlock and placed him on his lap. The mop of curls buried themselves in the fold of his jacket and he stroked the exposed back mildly, startled at the degree of affection which he had never attributed to his standoffish, often violently disobedient younger brother. A part of him was uncomfortable with the undue love and attention. The other half knew it wouldn't last and encouraged him to enjoy the moment.

Which was good, since it lasted only a moment. Since both of his hands went into the effort it took to balance Sherlock on his lap, he neglected John, who was simply sitting, hands folded in his lap waiting to get the acknowledgement he deserved.

The first inkling Mycroft had of trouble was a light moan. He turned and saw the boy staring up at him with large, weepy eyes.

"You cry a lot, don't you John?"

John reached up to Mycroft, clearly asking him to hold him like Sherlock.

Mycroft sighed. If he refused, the boy would be in hysterics. It took too long to recover from the last fit of hysterics. He would rather bite the bullet and try to balance two children on his not inconsiderable lap than deal with another fit of tears.

It was balancing thus, one child on each knee and one steady hand on each back, that Anthea walked into 221b.


	67. Recruiting Anthea

"Who're they?" She snapped. She had been expecting a great deal upon walking into 221b, in fact there were only about ten things she was unprepared for at any time. Her boss the iceman, and two children caught her completely off whatever guard she thought she had.

"Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson," Mycroft said calmly.

Anthea arched her eyebrow suspiciously.

"Is this one of your rare jokes sir? I'm not sure I catch the gag."

Mycroft summoned all of his disdain and extruded confidence, taunting Anthea's skepticism mercilessly.

"I do not joke," Mycroft said grimly. "I require your assistance in transporting these children to my home."

"Right, right," Anthea said, nodding her head teasingly. "What will you do with them there, eat them?"

"No, I'm not sure what I'll do. Feed them probably." He said eyeing John.

"Right," Anthea said, lacing her words with a thin veil of sarcasm in her special way that made it hard to perceive unless one was acutely looking for it. Mycroft was looking for it.

"Well, if you accept then kindly take Dr. Watson from my lap. I can only take one toddler at a time."

She smirked knowingly and with open, mothering arms she scooped the bouncing blond baby boy off of the unsteady, aching leg of the grim-faced Holmes.

"Come here baby," Anthea cooed, "I won't let the nasty man eat you, or fatten you up." She blew a gentle raspberry on one round, pink cheek and John giggled charmingly, much to Anthea's delight. "You're fat enough." She laughed, eyes sparkling.

Mycroft lifted a stubbornly clingy Sherlock into the air as he made a bolt for the door before Anthea had a chance to question him, because he was afraid he did not have any answers to satisfy her keen curiosity.

Anthea followed curiously, full of wonder at the unbelievable plan her boss, of all people, plotted. She was waiting to divine a certain purpose from the vague presence of the two children and their odd names.


	68. A Living Statue

Mycroft waited at the bottom of the stairs for her, as was his custom with women. He would waste countless minutes of every day waiting in front of doors for whatever female happened to be accompanying him and once they arrived he would flaunt his well-breed chivalry by opening that door for her, regardless of her wealth, position or class.

Reactions to this simple inexplicable kindness ranged from admiration to outrage, but Anthea was always grateful that he would take the time to differentiate her from his countless other employees by pausing and easing her burden by opening a path for her since her hands were generally full and generally full of his paperwork.

As she carefully walked down the steps balancing the foreign weight of John on her hip and struggling under the new sensation of hauling a small, squirming body she had a good reason to thank her boss for his kindly habit.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs with the toddler he had called Sherlock resting easily on his shoulder Mycroft seemed to her to be made of marble, his features exaggerated and somehow whimsically crafted instead of the weary or animated faces of people that are grown or eroded over countless years. He had often given her this impression; her and many, many others. She was the only person, though, who thought he might have had (in some far off and wistful alternate reality) have made an inspired actor, or model.

The only thing vaguely alive about him seemed to be the child, which breathed when the clean, tailored suit hid all but the slightest rustle of Mycroft's surely expanding chest; the child, which craned its neck and pecked at the stony jaw of that marble stranger with affectionate familiarity.

Suddenly, the iceman melted. The change was so subtle and instantaneous that it could have merely been Anthea blinking that had made her imagine the light carving gold into the ivory skin or the roses blushing to life in the tight thin lips, the flush of blood in the cheeks of cold flesh or the diamonds awakening in glorious triumph in the dead gray pits that forever peered out at parliament-wanderers, war-mongers and strangers lost in the labyrinth of The London Political Life.

As soon as she saw it happen, the transformation vanished leaving her even more doubtful than before, but the _impression_ lingered. The man she thought she had known lifted a floating hand, like a strange space ship drifting through the abysmal darkness that floated aimlessly in the hallway before the door and smoothed away the wisps of black curls, planting a tentative kiss on the child's smooth ivory forehead.

Sherlock grabbed Mycroft's tie and pulled it down until it looked suffocating around the pristinely starched collar which protected the man's neck.

Anthea reached the bottom, becoming aware of John and becoming slightly horror-stricken. Mycroft opened the door for her.

"This is real, this is really happening," She babbled uncertainly, waiting for someone or something to happen an unravel the play she felt compelled to put on for her boss, taking the children, who, to her, did not seem to be children and leaving the flat to places and people unknown with someone she thought she knew.

"We're really going to do this?" She asked, frightened at the tone she heard herself take.

Mycroft merely beckoned her to exit before him.


	69. Three Sizes

In the car, Anthea whispered hushed demands and small threats and through Mycroft's patience she eventually got the whole tale of the miraculous transformation of the two detectives and the reason for her boss's forced babysitting.

"It's all so impossible!" she cried gripping John as the car swerved onto the residential street where Mycroft Holmes' house was located.

Mycroft peeled Sherlock's hand off of his face where the little detective had been pinching the contours of his cheek and sighed. "No one understands that more than I. Yet I regret to inform you that your government, the one which we both serve in one way or another, is currently bending the limitations of possibility as we speak. This is not the strangest thing I have been a part of."

Anthea gave him a dubious look, "Really? Your younger brother becoming your _much_ younger brother is not the strangest thing that's ever happened to you?"

Sherlock squealed in delight as Mycroft opened the door of the car and surprised him with another smooch on the unprotected face.

"Perhaps it is the strangest that's happened to _me_," he said, "But it is not the worst by far."

Once he had left the car, and only when Anthea was sure he could not hear her she murmured in John's ear "And in Whoville they say, the Grinch's heart grew three sizes that day."

John giggled knowingly.


	70. I've Never Been to Your House

Mycroft nodded at the driver, who had been listening to the entire conversation as usual and as usual wanted only to go home for the night and play with his little girl and try to forget everything that he wasn't being paid to remember, such as meeting times and short cuts for the London rush hour. At the nod he pulled away from the curb and drove off into the night.

Anthea shifted John's weight from one hip to the next as he stuck his fingers into her hair and twisted each black strand around until he held a fist full of her sleek black hair.

"You know, I've never been to your house before." She said.

"Of course I know," Mycroft said, "Has it ever occurred to you that it was by design?"

Anthea smiled as Mycroft pointed out an inconspicuous home wedged in between two other identical houses and expertly balancing Sherlock on one hip fished a set of keys out of his suit pocket that she had never set eyes on before.

He stepped inside and held the door for her, hidden inside the shadows with his small, well suited sibling. Anthea slid inside with her soldier-doctor in miniature.

"Now, to business," he said flipping a switch and sending a surge of electricity to an ornate crystal chandelier that hung lazily in the midst of elegant vaulted ceilings and stretching a warm cheery glow up into the upper recesses of a staircase lined with wine red carpeting with mahogany banisters.

"What do children eat?" he asked.

"Why does your house look like the Diogenes club?" Anthea asked, blinking the stars from her vision.

"As one of the principle founding members of the Diogenes club I was in charge of decorum, staffing and membership approval, and as the owner of my house I enjoy much of the same privileges." He said curtly, resting his cheek on the top of Sherlock's head.

"Children. What do they eat?" he repeated patiently.

"I don't know, just food I suppose." Anthea said as John tugged her hair.

"You suppose?" Mycroft asked incredulously. "Why don't you know?"

"Why don't you know?" Anthea shot back.

"It's not my job to know," he said, taken aback.

"It's not my job either," Anthea said, "And even if it was, I'm technically off the clock now, aren't I?"

Mycroft pressed his thin lips together and said nothing for several moments. Acts of kindness often caught by surprise and realizing that once the sun had set Anthea had no reason to take orders, or accompany him to his home with the shrunken John Watson made him also realize that she was emotionally invested in the situation in some way. He owed her a debt of gratitude that he knew he would struggle to pay.

"I have a lounge upstairs, let us take them there and then we can discuss what to do." He said quietly after several seconds of contemplation.


	71. I'M HAMBREE! (Don't leave me)

The upstairs lounge was cared for by a single maid, yet on certain surfaces, such as the book cases that lined the walls with symmetrically bound tomes of old and valuable literatures, dust could be collected on one's finger as thick as a sugar coating.

The reason this negligence had gone unpunished in the home of Mycroft Holmes was due to the fact that, quite frankly, he had never noticed. He hadn't been in the upstairs of his home in several months. The downstairs had a lounge of its own furnished with all of his favorite books and chairs with the softest, most attractive cushions, and beyond the comfortable lounge was his bedroom, one ornate bathroom and a state of the art kitchen area. He hated the waste of energy walking upstairs demanded and thus spent all of his time on the ground floor of his home.

He had once, in a flight of fancy, wondered if he shouldn't just buy a home with one story, but the fact that his work was quite literally just behind the street he lived on and the Diogenes was just across the way from his front window sealed the home irrevocably in his mind as the center of his daily routine and sacred habits.

Now, he frowned like thunder, wiping his single spear-like finger over various surfaces and furiously glaring at the accumulated dust.

"This room is supposed to be clean," he growled.

"We can deal with your poor housekeeping later," Anthea said dropping John to the ground and letting him run to the table and duck beneath the wooden legs in evident delight. Within seconds Sherlock was squealing and kicking to be allowed to do the same. Mycroft reluctantly obliged.

"What are we going to do about our newly appointed promotion to parenthood?" she asked.

"I'M HAMBREE!" John cried as Sherlock grabbed his legs and attempted to pull him out from beneath the table by force.

"No!" Sherlock screamed as John crawled on his elbows across the carpeted floor, back to the protection of the table clinging to the legs for dear salvation.

"The first thing is food," Mycroft said quickly, "John said he was hungry, and once Sherlock eats he needs to nap, every time."

"Great, what do you have to eat here?"

"Grouse, pumpkin flan, some left-over tomato tarts with chives and apples."

Anthea waited for him to finish a few seconds after he already had; she'd been expecting much more

"Is that it?" she asked.

"I've some milk," he said meekly.

"That can't be all you have in your house! Don't you stock food?" she cried.

"No I don't," he said.

"Back, back, back!" John shrieked as Sherlock joined him hunkered under the table.

Anthea swatted at the two boys and thought deeply about the food situation, wanting nothing better than for one of the two boys to suddenly feel sleepy, especially when Sherlock slipped a ring off of her finger while John distracted her hand.

She struggled with peeling his iron grip away from the gold band, an act made doubly hard by John's ambush on her other arm, but by the time she had gotten it back she had a fine idea of what children would like to eat that she could find in just a few minutes.

"Alright, I've got a plan," she said confidently.

"What is it?"

"I'll go out and get something to eat, you entertain them until I get back."

Mycroft stared at her waiting for the laughter, or the expression that would reassure him that she was kidding. It never came.

"No… how about I go and get the food?"

"Trust me, I'll be less than five minutes."

Mycroft stared at her dubiously. He had no doubt in her abilities to procure food.

"Five minutes?"

Anthea nodded.

Mycroft sighed. He'd been sitting the children before she'd arrived, he supposed he could do it with her gone.

"Alright, but quickly. Do you need me to call a cab?"

"Not at all," she smiled, imagining her boss, the iceman, the politician, left alone with the two toddlers that were, even now, trying to rip the upholstery off the couch by the single loose thread they had found. Even as he watched her silently, he seemed to be asking for help.

"It's in walking distance then?" He asked.

"Yes," Anthea said.

He did not want to be left alone with two rambunctious toddlers. He hoped that Anthea would simply pick up on his reluctance to let her leave. She did, and mercilessly ignored it.

"Take care," She said exiting into the glowing hallway.

"Be swift," Mycroft pleaded as the door swung shut with a chilling click.

"Bye ladies!" John cried as Sherlock climbed onto his back and drove his knees into John's shoulder blades. This was followed by a shrill scream and a growling noise from Sherlock.


	72. What've You Got To Say?

John rolled over and sent Sherlock snarling into the leg of the table, which collided with his head and made a horrible hollow thud. Mycroft watched, petrified with horror, as Sherlock began to sob, and then roar with anger.

Mycroft foresaw danger and scooped up Sherlock before he had the chance to hop on John and deal his own brand of toddler-justice. He kissed the approximate area where Sherlock had hit his head and said "John, you've hurt Sherlock's head. What do you have to say for yourself?"

John looked up at the man with pleading eyes, wondering if his share of the agony had been noticed at all. He swung his head low, pitifully looking at the floor and murmured: "Shorry."

Mycroft put Sherlock down and pinned him in place with a stern, no-nonsense look. The toddler who had thought he had gotten the better of the situation was shocked and appalled.

"Sherlock, your climbing hurt John. What do you have to say for _yourself_?"

There was a long winded explanation in baby talk full of descriptive gestures and powerful expressions, and when Sherlock had finished his elegant defense, Mycroft had only this to say:

"Yes, but you hurt John. What needs to be said Sherlock?"

There was another long pause, full of anger, incredulity and shocked understanding. At the end of this pause Sherlock turned to John, stuck out his hand for a shake and said: "Sorry,"

John ignored the outstretched paw and wrapped his arms around his neck for a hug. It was a touching moment that made Mycroft think maybe he _could_ handle watching two children without Anthea.

* * *

**My ultimate goal is to write a story that gets exactly 1895 veiws and then suddenly stop writing. It's very hard to do, I've missed it by more than 50 like, 6 times. Or I get about 1067 veiws and like, three more veiws for every chapter, or I get distracted by successful stories like Childish and just don't finish them.**

** I'd also like to announce that Childish has just PASSED 40,000 VEIWS! WOW! d 0_o b Thank you internet people everywhere! My newest goal is to pass 50,000 before the end of Childish, but don't worry, we've still got a whole boat-load of chapters to go!**


	73. Grenadiers and Indians

But when Sherlock cried "Grenadiers and Indians!" he found himself recalling all of the old horrors from his childhood. Namely that Sherlock and his associated playmate were always Indians and he, regardless of his participation, was always the Grenadier.

How he loathed the day Father had taught Sherlock that word.

In a flash Sherlock was latched onto his knee, whooping and screaming like a savage little boy, doing his typecast impression of an Indian war-cry. John watched this development for a moment, then joined in with gusto. When Mycroft bent down to unlatch Sherlock from his trouser leg John scaled the sofa and jumped onto his back, wrapping his arms under and over Mycroft's left shoulder and essentially monopolizing his whole back in an attempt to hang on.

It was an ambush! Mycroft flailed, giving Sherlock a little ride on his leg as it soared through the air less than a foot off the ground, and he bucked giving John a challenge holding on to the arm he had captured.

In actuality he could have stood up straight and John would have slid off his arm and Sherlock would have gotten bored attacking his pants, but the excitement was keeping the two occupied on something other than killing each other. If being the attacked meant peace would reign between the two flat mates until they could be restored then Mycroft could take it.

But after a minute or so of letting John ride his hunched back, Mycroft felt his old muscle pinch the nerve and send a spasm of pain into his hips. Soon he would need to sit down or straighten up. The fun was over.

He groaned and let one knee buckle underneath him. Sherlock stared in shock as the pain twisted across Mycroft's face. He carefully lowered himself to the floor where he lay face-first on the (thankfully clean) floor.

"I am defeated, argh!" Mycroft growled into the carpet.

John and Sherlock joined each other in standing over their fallen enemy, quietly contemplating their victory. Then Sherlock began his Indian-war-dance, jumping on one foot, and then hopping on the other, howling to an unheard rhythm. John hopped to no rhythm, but cried just as convincingly as Sherlock. And thus they danced around their victim, giving their victim time to think of the next game.

* * *

**Do you people realize that have written nearly eighty chapters of stories about children and there has been no playtime in any of them?**

**Also, I probably should have split these story chunks into seperate stories with sequals instead of seperate archs being all part of the same story. No one actually reads a seventy chapter story unless it's less than 5,000 words. So as Childish gets longer, people want to read it less. That will make getting more than 50,000 tricky. Darn you math, I told you to get lost, I'm with Summer now!**


	74. Pirate's Cave

"Alright, how about an adventure game next?" He asked, picking himself off the floor and dusting the wrinkles out of his jacket.

"Lives!" John cried, "It lives!"

With a masterful sweep of his arms, deploying the quick wit that had made him indispensable to the British Government Mycroft roared and sent the two toddlers scurrying for cover.

While they hid to think of a strategy Mycroft gutted the sofa, tossing pillows and cushions onto the floor and pulled three chairs around the mound of pillows.

The only other thing he needed was probably in the linen closet in the guest bedroom. He would need to ensure that both children wouldn't follow him first. It was hard enough keeping the two toddlers localized in one room, if he let them loose on the rest of his house he might never see them again; they would hide and simply vanish in the vast cabinets and closets of his home.

"Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum…" He gurgled stomping heavily towards where he'd seen John run. He heard a small cupboard shut with a snap.

Now he ambled towards Sherlock, deliberately lengthening his stride, "I smell children having fun…!"

He heard an excited whimper and, satisfied that the game of hide and go seek would continue in his absence he stole away to the linen closet and grabbed three large sheets.

When he returned the impatient toddlers were standing around his monument curiously, and he could tell by the acceptance in their eyes he was no longer a monster. At least, not for the moment.

He opened one of the crème colored sheets and spread it over the pillows, carefully maneuvering it so that the children trying to scurry under the covers did not become trapped, then he opened the other two blankets and draped them across all four chairs.

When he was finished he stepped back from the make-shift cave and opened the flap for the entrance which loomed invitingly in front of the two awestruck toddlers.

"Go find the treasure in Pirate's cave," he commanded. Sherlock and John dove into the nest of pillows and began narrating their adventures in an indescribable baby talk.


	75. The Shade

Suddenly an enormous clatter downstairs signaled someone at his front door, knocking belligerently. Belatedly, he realized that he had never given Anthea the key to his house. She was locked outside.

"Finally," He told the toddlers in the cave of pillows, "your dinner."

John cheered, Sherlock made a noise closely resembling a pirate's 'Argh!'

Mycroft stood and brushed off his suit, hoping to erase the wrinkles and evidence of his role in the little boy's play. He opened the door to a darkened parlor and went downstairs to fetch Anthea.

It was nineteen steps down from the top floor of his flat to the ground floor and even though he did not frequent the upper story, it was still a handy figure to have for nights such as that one where he meandered through the absolute darkness groping blindly towards the door, guided only by the sleek wooden banister and his memory of the room. Why Anthea had seen fit to turn out the lights as she left was beyond him.

The dim glow from a single streetlamp poured in through the small window above his door, the same window which had filtered the morning sun so beautifully just a few mornings ago. Now the rectangle of light seemed to be the window of a prison cell, casting itself wistfully onto the carpet.

The knocking came again, a bit fiercer and louder than before. Mycroft wondered if Anthea was spooked by something, or if the meal she had envisioned was so heavy she had difficulty carrying it. He suddenly felt a twinge of regret at not insisting she take a cab.

He grabbed the door handle and with two twists he unlatched the locks. He unassumingly opened the door and found himself faced with an unfamiliar silhouette cloaked in the darkness.

"Mycroft Holmes?" The shaded figure asked. For one moment Mycroft mused over giving an answer, but something in the shadow spoke to him of danger; something in the voice hinted of malice. He made to slam the door shut but in two quick moves the shadow had planted his foot in front of the door, blocking it from closing and had pulled something out of an inner pocket of the black overcoat he wore. Mycroft did not need the full light to identify the dull gleam of grey metal, nor the shape of a common gun.


	76. Stalling

"Mr. Holmes, let's you and I go for a ride." the shade said with a thinly veiled relish, motioning with his gun for Mycroft to step outside.

Mycroft looked back over his shoulder at the thin band of light leaking out from the room where he'd left Sherlock and John. Reluctantly he stepped into the crisp night air that pinched his skin with icy fingers through his thin jacket.

An inconspicuous black car was parked two houses away from where he stood. The only thing remotely odd about it was the backseat passenger side door hanging open expectantly.

"You catch on quick Mr. Holmes," the shadowy figure said following his gaze, still purposefully tuning its head away from the glare of the street light. The collar of the black jacket he wore was pulled up against the heinous light. The shadow of the collar made a black mask, but Mycroft could see the gleam of icy blue eyes peering out from a cruel brow.

"If you don't mind," The man said, ushering him impatiently with a few quick motions of his weapon.

Mycroft knew he had to stall. All he had ever been taught about kidnappings was to stall, and by God he would stall. Now was not the time for any of this political assassination, hidden agenda nonsense. His brother actually needed him, and he could not afford to be absent. Not again.

"Who are you?" Mycroft pressed, facing the road so as to look like he was beginning to comply with the shaded figure's commands.

"Oh, you know me," The man said, waving his gun lazily, "I'm a friend of a friend."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?" Mycroft shot back, genuinely confused.

"It should," The man finished eerily, allowing no room for further conversation, and therefore no room for further stalling.

"What do you want?" Mycroft tried.

"I want you to quit stalling and start to walk," The man said jabbing Mycroft's back with the hard metal cylinder, pushing him towards the car roughly.

Mycroft dragged his feet across the concrete, his mind racing to place the face, the voice and the man who had mysteriously appeared seemingly out of thin air just to compromise his proximity to Sherlock. Every step away from the two toddlers was a new anxiety to weigh on his mind. The bite of the metal against his skin had sent a snake of ice through his heart and into his stomach, making him ill and distracting his usually imperious mind from developing the minimum-risk escape route he so desperately needed.

A small, tentative part of him knew that if he stepped into the car, the car which loomed closer with every reluctant step, he would likely be dead before midnight. He tried not to let that part of his mind take control, the charged emotions that accompanied images of his death were generally distracting. The only priority for him was to return to his brother and finish the care-giving for the night. After Sherlock was again a semi-capable adult he could be subject to as many of these sorts of confrontations as luck and a limited schedule would allow.

He reached out his hand and touched the cold metal of the car door. It seemed to chill his whole arm to numbness.

The shadow man gave him another encouraging nudge with the gun and said easily, thoughtlessly: "Don't worry about the children,"

Mycroft turned and confronted the man head-on, a sudden burst of curiosity easily overpowering his fear. The man cringed and turned away from Mycroft's face and the light of the nearby streetlamp.

"What do _you_ know about the children?" he asked accusingly.

"Erp, I saw you with, uhh… two when you came home…Get in the car Mr. Holmes." The man faltered for a moment, then the gruffness in his voice returned, and with it the gun rose to a perfect track with Mycroft's nose.

But in that moment of clarity, when Mycroft had caught a glimpse of the man's face in the full light, he had recognized him.

"Do I know you…_Colonel?_"

The act had ended. The man faced Mycroft without his shield of darkness and the streetlamp cast all of his frightening features in perfect light.

Colonel Sebastian Moran. Often thought to be in the employ of Moriarty, yet never confirmed due to his prolonged disappearance. Now Mycroft understood the friend of a friend reference. He understood why the children were to be _taken care of_.

Moran raised the gun above his head, preparing to bash Mycroft with the butt of the gun. So long as the intruding politician was in the car, it didn't really matter how he got there or in what condition.

Mycroft raised a single arm to defend himself with when Moran gave a grunt of surprise. Mycroft looked up and saw Anthea twisting Moran's wrist, bearing her teeth in feral aggression. With a heavy grunt Moran dropped the gun, which Anthea sent skittering over the pavement with one sharp kick.

"Go to them sir," She grunted as Moran struggled to get his arm back, "Go to them!"

That was just what he planned to do, but not before he made one point to the Colonel.

Anthea grappled to paralyze the man's fearsome strength by twisting his arm behind his back and once she had managed to largely immobilize him, Mycroft made a fist, pulled it behind his head and straightened his arm all at once in an explosion of fury.

The Colonel sank to the ground; his head having snapped back from the force of the blow now lolled over his chest like a tethered ball. The other arm that had been swinging and swiping ferociously, trying to knock away his captor flung out wildly and scratched Mycroft's face with a shy brush as the wired body became limp and heavy.

Anthea dropped him suddenly, afraid of breaking the arm she held twisted behind his back. She bent over to check for vital signs and damage but Mycroft stopped her with a strong grip on her arm.

"Someone's up there!" he cried sprinting back to his house.

* * *

**I couldn't bear the thought of torturing my readers by spliting this chapter into peices. :) So I split the next part into small chunks. Mwahaha.**


	77. A Mad Dash

People often state that Mycroft Homes is exceedingly lazy, and for the most part they are right. He works an exhaustive schedule, which of course he finds very easy due to his ability to excel at anything which requires the attention of his peculiar faculties and the remainder of his time which is not dedicated to work is a monument to lethargy. He founded a club which promotes inaction, he lives less than a stone's throw away from anything he might need and anything outside of that stone's throw is simple too much effort to care about.

Yet for all of his inactive hours, in the moment which he thought Sherlock could be murdered less than thirty meters from where he stood Anthea discovered her boss had a hidden inertia that carried him, very swiftly, away from her.

Mycroft entered his home and threw the light switch, bringing the chandelier to life with a faint flickering. Before it had fully lit, he was already tearing up the stairs.

He reached out and furiously wrenched the knob, throwing the door open and taking in the scene at a glance.

The pillow fort had been raided, the chairs were over turned, and the pirates had left.

It didn't take long to find them though. Anthea gripped his arm tensely, he heard her breath catch as she peered over his shoulder at the figure sitting on the window sill, holding an unsuspicious Sherlock on his lap, like a thin, dark Santa.

"Jim, release the boy," Mycroft tried to summon all the power he could in the command, but his voice crept out weakly.


	78. No Means No

Jim Moriarty rolled his shoulders and flashed his best unnerving grin at the two bedraggled caretakers as he lovingly stroked the wild curls that spiraled dizzyingly atop Sherlock's head.

"Why? I think he's just started to like me," Jim sang, planting a kiss on the fair temple and wrapping his arms around the small boy in a protective hug.

"Let him go," Mycroft said with more strength.

"Boo, you never let me have any fun!" Jim whined, nuzzling his face into the black curls. Sherlock giggled.

Anthea was the first to notice John, curled around Jim's leg like a beaten puppy too frightened to run, yet chained to the source of his fear by something; perhaps clinging to Sherlock, scared of leaving him alone with Jim. A cookie was clutched in his tiny fingers, but it had not yet occurred to him to eat it

"Meany Mycroft always has to take poor Jimmy's toys," Jim cooed into Sherlock's ear, "He can't stand other people having fun!"

"So help me-!"

"Yes!" Jim exclaimed suddenly, "Help you; God knows why I'm helping you!"

Mycroft paused uncertainly. "Helping me with…what exactly?"

Jim stared at Mycroft, resting his lips on the back of Sherlock's head and peering up at his brother with a mocking, cruel glare.

"What do you think Sherlock," He talked at the toddler teasingly, "Should I tell him, or let him figure it out?"

Sherlock said nothing for a moment, merely gripped the hands that secured him around his middle with his tiny paws. Finally he came to a decision, shaking his head back and forth emphatically.

Jim shrugged nonchalantly, "You heard him. No means no."


	79. I Love Lil'lock

"Let him go," Mycroft demanded, narrowing his eyes into a steely glint.

"Why?" Jim repeated, "I'm not _hurting_ the baby; I love lil'lock, see?" He squeezed Sherlock in another tight hug, like a small teddy bear. Sherlock accepted the affection without qualm.

John nibbled at the biscuit in his hands, wishing so to be noticed, wishing even more that the man who had given him his snack would put Sherlock down so that they could get back to their game.

"He's just a boy," Mycroft said, "Let him be; he's just a _boy_,"

"Oh, stop your sniveling," Jim snapped, "I'd expect such sap from her," He said pointing at Anthea with his thumb derisively, "Not you, oh high and mighty one,"

"Jim," Mycroft barked, "Now's not the time,"

"Shut up you old codfish, "Jim said crankily, hugging Sherlock just a bit tighter, "If I was in earnest trying to nab your precious babies, I wouldn't be here. Nor, for that matter, would you."

Sherlock stared up into the face of his captor and Jim planted one last kiss on the smooth, soft forehead before sliding him off of his beloved Westwood suit and patting him on the back, nudging him off towards the desperately awaiting arms of his brother.

"Go on, you little idiot, go to papa idiot and grow up," Jim said fondly, placing his hand on the top of John's head to arrest any urge to join his friend.


	80. I'm Keeping It

John cried in dark surprise. Jim quickly scooped him up and replaced the empty seat on his lap. He gave the toddler a kiss to match Sherlock's as compensation for the evident distress the boy was in. John whined and kicked a bit as Jim wrapped his python gripped hug around his tiny body.

"Well, I'd best be off," he said cheerfully, "Best of luck, Papa Holmes."

"You're crazy if you think we'd let you leave with John Watson," Anthea blurted suddenly.

Jim shot her a glare full of lightning, insulted like a king being contradicted by a peasant.

"What?" he cried, feigning outrage, "I can't keep one!"

Mycroft lifted Sherlock, squeezing him slightly for reassurance. "On my brother's behalf, I cannot allow you to kidnap his friend."

Jim stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry immaturely, causing an anxious John to look up and for the first time giggle with ease. Jim was delighted.

"It's not like I'd keep him forever, just until he grew up. Isn't that right Johnny-boy?"

"Who's to say when that will be?" Mycroft asked, cleverly pulling for information.

Jim smiled silently. He saw the ploy. It wouldn't be that easy to milk information out of him. Mycroft should have learned better the first time.

"I'll give him right back, just as soon as Shirley-Whirly wants him; yes I will, yes I will," Jim babbled idiotically, much to John's joy.

"How can we trust you?" Mycroft shot bitterly, causing Sherlock to bury his head in his shoulder fearfully. "You're more inclined to keep John and use him as leverage against us, am I correct?"

Jim stopped his cooing and smiled wryly at John, staring right through the toddler as his dark eyes reflected the soulless depravity that fueled the machinations of his mind.

"Maybe," he sang in a high, wailing tone.

Tears sprang up in John's eyes.

Jim's voice plunged to the dull roar of thunder, "Maybe, after all this time you would learn to trust my word as gospel,"

Jim shook lightly. After a moment that shaking revealed itself to be laughter, and he said with a merrily trembling voice, "After all, _I've_ never broken a promise to _you_, have I Mycroft?"


	81. Toppling the King

Mycroft stood as still as a statue, Sherlock still frozen in fear in his arms. He seemed to project all of the hardness monitoring Jim had inspired in him over the years in that one expression.

Jim whispered "Eat the biscuit Johnny," to the frightened boy, who slowly, reluctantly, obliged.

"There is no escape. You cannot leave this room with John," Mycroft pressed, hoping for surrender.

"I could jump out the window and land on the large mattress my people have been setting up for the duration of my visit," Jim quipped jovially.

"You might hurt John!" Anthea cried.

"No!" Jim said with biting scorn, "He'll land on the mattress too, stupid,"

"Jim, _is _there a mattress down there?" Mycroft asked suddenly.

Jim smiled sardonically. "Wouldn't you like to find out?"

Slowly, carefully so as no one could miss a single elegant, calculating gesture, Jim slid the bolt out of the locked window and ran his fingers up and down the sill, toying with opening the window. He put his leg on the sill where he was sitting, balancing John carefully on his hip with one arm wrapped protectively around the boy in case he saw fit to make an escape.

"You wouldn't…" Anthea dared, receiving another glance of annoyed frustration and derision.

The metal in the window screamed as Jim pulled it one fourth of the way open, fighting against the accumulated rust of a neglected window as best he could using only one arm.

"Wouldn't you like to find out?" He repeated ominously, grinning disconcertingly.

Something in his eyes, something in his smile; something in his manner told Mycroft he would really do it.

"Stop!" Mycroft shouted in spite of himself. Sherlock kicked him lightly, wanting only to run away and hide from him while he was angry, but Mycroft needed the reassurance of a familiar presence. He needed Sherlock.

Jim smiled sweetly, "Yes?"

Mycroft stared at the crystal decanter of brandy, so light and glittering in the meager illumination of the room. He swallowed his pride and his reservations.

He stepped further into the room, and to the left of the door leaving an open pathway to the staircase.

Anthea whispered a shocked "Sir?" before following reluctantly in his footsteps.

Jim chuckled, swinging his body around and putting John in a more comfortable grip.

"See? A little bit of trust. That wasn't so hard, was it?" he laughed. John took one look at the serious faces and began, softly, to cry.

Jim bounced him on his lap momentarily before standing and maneuvering him uncertainly until John was lying on his back in Jim's arms, as one might hold a small baby. It was not a particularly tenable position for either of them.

"Come on now, no water works," Jim whined striding confidently across the room as John struggled to pull himself upright and Jim struggled to hold him down without dropping him.

As Jim stepped across the threshold of the door, Anthea called his full name and caused him to turn to her wearing his usual glare of scorn and outrage.

When he did Anthea wrapped her arms around John while simultaneously kneeing Jim in the seat of his pants. Jim dropped John, who fell screaming into Anthea's grip, and staggered forward a bit, which was when Anthea tripped him.

She merely stuck out her foot and, just like on television, Jim's foot caught hers and sent him flying off balance towards the staircase. It would have been an impressive feat had she planned it just that way, but instead she had acted on a whim. A first in her career as Mycroft's PA.

With a detached sense of horror, Anthea heard the sickening thuds as Jim rolled down the stairs, choking off screams with grunts of pain. She turned and gazed down into the gaudily lit hall, pressing gently against the back of John's neck to keep his head firmly against her shoulder. She felt a small puddle of water accumulate around his face and she heard the noisy wail of a crying child, but in that moment all of her other senses melted away and she rushed to see if she had taken a man's life, feeling as though her body was moving in slow motion across a vast plain of wooden floor lit by a chandelier sun.

As she looked down onto the prostrate body of Moriarty wedged more than halfway down the stairs she felt a sense of vertigo, as though the stairs were an optical illusion she had just unraveled, and she had discovered that instead of on flat ground she was standing at a slope and the stairs were painted on the edge of a cliff that plummeted straight down.

In a flash, though, that sense of horror was replaced with relief and then a new sense of horror when the still body suddenly opened his eyes with a flash of rage and glared ruefully up the stairs at her.

He lay there for a moment, frustration and indignity flaring dangerously in his stormy expressions. Then he quietly stood up, straightened out his rumpled suit, turned and walked out the front door, slamming it shut behind him.

"Hopefully that is the last we'll see of him tonight," Mycroft said appearing at her shoulder.

The relief, the anxiety and the confusion of having John Watson back in her arms sapped Anthea of any response beyond "Yes…yes…" which she delivered without feeling.

A hand was placed on her shoulder gently, "That was a very brave thing you did, and you have my thanks,"

She smiled.

* * *

**I thought to myself: "Here's a long chapter, let's make it longer," **

**Firstly I'd like to thank everyone reading again, because this story has passed another mile stone. It now has 100 followers! That's 100 people who will definately read this fic every update! JOY! **


	82. Recovery

Suddenly a thought occurred to her which snapped her back to reality.

"Oh, the meals are downstairs. I tossed them in when I ran after you," And with that she handed a weeping John to Mycroft, who managed with difficulty to hold both toddlers at the same time. Sherlock was beginning to peek out of Mycroft's shoulder when he saw John crying, and burrowed his head back into the safety of the gray fabric.

Mycroft carefully placed the frightened children on the mound of pillows they had been playing on and looked each of them over carefully starting with John, checking for burns or nicotine patches or anything that would make it alright for Jim to simply walk out of his house without demanding the prizes he'd come for.

John seemed unharmed, merely frightened. Mycroft gave him a very serious tummy kiss and John chortled through his tears, his shiny red face smiling with the simple joy a funny noise can resurrect in the heart of a child.

Sherlock had buried himself in a blanket, and looked up when he heard laughter, but ducked and covered himself tightly with the sheet when Mycroft knelt beside him. Mycroft tried to pry the blanket away, but the tenacity of little Sherlock was just as strong as with adult Sherlock.

Mycroft shrugged as Anthea came back inside carrying two vermillion boxes adorned with a garish yellow arch.

"What happened to the cushions?" she asked.

"I invented a playtime magic cave," Mycroft said stoically picking up pillow after pillow and replacing them on the sofas and chairs.

"I'll probably never hear you say any of those words again, much less all together in a sentence," Anthea said opening the boxes on a small table. "I should've had a camera out,"

"Would you like to go to the dining room?" he asked.

* * *

**Oh...My...Gravy...50,000 veiws! WE MADE IT! WOOT WOOT! Dance with me Fanfiction! :vD**


	83. A Mere Bagatelle

John walked over to Sherlock, who was closed off from the world as tightly as a clam and tenderly poked the blanket. Sherlock didn't move.

"Sharock, de dar atticus solom tu?" John babbled forlornly.

"Ga gan eri omu deis." Sherlock dismissed coldly.

"Ba, ba… rama san pulli! Sharock!" John cried verging on tears again, pressing his hands into the blanket, pleading with Sherlock hopelessly.

Suddenly Sherlock unraveled his impenetrable exterior and emerged wearing a queer expression.

"Haw, haw, Jam," He said to his friend.

"No," John stated roughly.

"Haw, haw," Sherlock repeated with force.

"No!" John curled into a ball and fell on the floor covering his ears and face with his arms.

Sherlock was silent for a minute, staring at John in the midst of his fit. And then he threw up the blanket and let it fall over his friend like a shroud of protection.

When Anthea returned she found Mycroft staring at the two toddlers in consternation.

"What is it, what's wrong?" she asked.

"I'm trying to understand what just happened," he said seriously.

* * *

**Since nothing much happened in this chapter, I would like to break away to talk about my awesome readers. I have always envied those few fanfictions with 100+ reviews. The other day while I was marveling over the number of veiws, it struck me suddenly and violently that CHILDISH IS ONE OF THEM! It happened so gradually I didn't even notice! Since so many awesome things are happening one after the other, and since you are probably bored to death with me bragging about my Fanfiction, I'm just going to do something nice and stop blathering on like a doting parent.**

**Someone once asked me to write what happened to Jim and Sebastian after the first transformation. Look forward to the end of Mycroft's saga to find out!**


	84. Pig

"Dinner, come on boys, food!" Anthea sang clapping her hands together and pulling up the sheet and revealing the two crouching children underneath.

"Suey! Here pig, pig, pig!" She cried happily as the two children scampered around like two little pigs and Anthea chased them, herding them towards Mycroft who scooped up Sherlock, squealing and whooping with laughter in one arm and spinning him around to scoop up John with his other arm.

The boys kicked and thrust out their arms as Mycroft flew them around and around, until he finally knelt down, letting them plummet to earth before gently letting them put their feet under them. He took John's hand and gave Sherlock's to Anthea and together, two by two they walked downstairs.


	85. Junk Food

Mycroft's dining room was fully equipped to host massive parties, if he had any parties to host. The table was built of study, dark wood and a motley of chairs stood soldiered up and down either side, patiently awaiting visitors to support.

The two ruby boxes sat as empty place cards at the table, their contents having been lain out neatly for the two clamoring toddlers.

Mycroft looked down his nose at the contents of the meal.

"Is this not considered _junk food_?" he said with carefully repressed disdain.

"Fruit and milk," Anthea pointed to the sliced apples and jug-shaped containers of white liquid. "It's healthier than it was in my day,"

John pried open the cardboard container which held the chicken, ripping the box irreparably. Anthea tore open a packet of ketchup and squeezed it empty on a napkin. Mycroft hurriedly opened the apples for Sherlock and twisted the cap off the milk in a flash.

And suddenly the job was over. The toddlers fed themselves, amusing themselves by occasionally making engine noises and twirling their food around in the air as it made a circular path to their mouths.

Mycroft fetched the tomato tarts from his icebox and he and Anthea had a light meal, watching the children slowly finish their food, reaching for the toys that Anthea had placed just out of reach.

The toys were insects with wheels and both boys got small plastic bees, which they delighted in racing along the edge of the table, making the screeching noise of squealing tires and then crashing with exaggerated explosions and effects.

Sherlock was the first to yawn. Anthea quickly glanced at Mycroft, joy and panic in her eyes. Mycroft waved a calming hand, ushering her to keep clam, a yawn did not always mean sleep.

But then John lost his enthusiasm for racing and contented himself with idly pushing the bee up and down the table track while Sherlock crashed into him repeatedly, attacking the other bee with a single-stick style assault with his stinger.

Then Sherlock rested his heavy head on his hand, eyelids sinking shut and his beloved toy rolling out of reach.

"Alright," Mycroft said in a hushed tone, "That's enough, let's put them to sleep,"

"Thank God!" Anthea exclaimed, "I thought this day would never end,"

* * *

**McDonalds, although not explicitly named, is copyright of the United Not Me Inc. Sherlock and associated characters also belond to this devision of reality.**


	86. Little Brother

Mycroft smiled, quietly pushing his chair back and sneaking behind the chair of his brother. He easily lifted a snoozing Sherlock out of his chair, cushioning his head so it would not fall and startle him awake and lying him out in his arms.

He waited for Anthea to do the same, all the while musing over how tiny his brother was, fast asleep in his arms. How vulnerable, how trusting. Never before had Sherlock allowed him as close as they had been today. That was partly his fault, growing up as he did extruding a sense of unjust superiority in order to isolate himself from Sherlock. The result of his childhood pride was that he had taught Sherlock, in his more trusting days, not to trust. That he had taught him to be haughty and clever and cruel. Now, whenever Mycroft wandered to Baker Street he could see the results of his teachings. The haughty attitude towards him, punctuated with clever remarks and cruel insinuations.

But that night Sherlock was asleep in his arms, having roused slightly, seen himself safe in the arms of his brother and fallen back to sleep without hesitation. Mycroft floated to the guest bedroom, Anthea drifting just behind.


	87. A Bed for Giants

Mycroft lay Sherlock flat out over the covers of his large, plush guest bed and set himself to removing the shoes and socks from his feet. Anthea watched, followed and then did the same.

Mycroft pulled off Sherlock's little suit jacket gingerly, rolling him over once. Sherlock gave a small whine, but his eyes did not open. Anthea placed the shoes on the floor and rolled back the bed sheets. In one subtle rocking motion she lifted John Watson and slipped him under the covers where he rolled over, thumb securely in his mouth, into the pillows and nestled comfortably into the clean, downy sheets.

Mycroft lifted Sherlock unevenly, scooping his little legs and shoving them under the covers at the last possible moment before Sherlock decided he really did not want to be touched anymore.

With his head pressed into the large, plush pillows Mycroft had a dizzying sense that Sherlock was even smaller than he had felt before. His head seemed minute in comparison to the massiveness of the pillow.

Yet, as he turned back and gazed at the two heads peeking over the rim of blankets, he had a sense that the children were larger somehow, that they were not mere boys in an adult bed, but grown men in a bed for giants.

He turned out the light and closed the door, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

"Anything else sir?" Anthea said, her eyes showing the dim exhaustion that day had taken out of her.

"No," He said, "Please go and get some sleep. Feel free to come in late tomorrow."

"Yes sir," She said as she shuffled downstairs.

The light from the chandelier was still burning, but the room felt pervaded with shadows as she tiredly shuffled along under the guise of rest. In truth she felt she would probably lie awake in bed, curious and anxious to return to her boss to see what surprises the morning brought.

"Wait," Mycroft called down to her from the top of the stairwell and she spun around in anticipation.

"Let me call you a cab,"

"It's alright sir, it's only a few blocks from here," she insisted absently. In fact, a cab sounded perfect. A gentle ride with the hum of a motor to drown out the hum of her raging thoughts.

Mycroft arched his eyebrows imperiously, "You knocked London's foremost criminal mastermind down a flight of stairs. Please refrain from going anywhere on your own from now on,"

Anthea smiled wearily, wondering if she would ever truly escape from her boss that night. "Alright then, is it alright if I wait with you?"

Mycroft beckoned her to re-enter the upstairs lounge, waiting for her, as was his custom, to open the door and let her through first.

"It would be a genuine pleasure,"


	88. The Villains Recover

In a classy apartment cleverly hidden within a derelict building in one of London's seedier neighborhoods Jim Moriarty lounged across his long sofa with icepacks wedged under his neck, back, knees and resting over his eyes. He punched the soft pillow that propped up his head with the back of his fists and whined at his sniper, who nursed his blackened eye with an icepack of his own.

"Do you realize we were thwarted by two _office workers_?" He spat insipidly, "Two _office workers _stopped us from kidnapping children. Not even _a child_!"

Sebastian sank into one of Jim's leather chairs, his nose buried in a pack of ice.

"A _politician_ and his _secretary_," Jim fumed, wincing as he made an expressive gesture that hurt his back. "I mean, do we suck or what?"

"You know it wasn't any politician and it wasn't any secretary." Sebastian responded thickly, muffled through the ice. "It was a Holmes, and Holmes' don't just choose any sidekicks,"

"Neither do I," Jim snapped, "A tiger hunting Colonel gets knocked out by a pencil-skirt wearing secretary; lovely!"

"She surprised me!" Sebastian shot back, tenderly nursing his bruised ego, "And Holmes clocked me, not her!"

He fished through his pockets for a cigarette while whispering, "They double teamed me, what's your excuse?"

"What was that?" Jim asked dangerously.

"I said what did we need the pups for anyway?" Sebastian quickly saved himself.

Jim growled, "I want to know how long it takes for the antidote to work; how long it will take for one of us to be back in commission after a botched Genil mission."

"Why not just make sure we don't botch it?"

"Thank you Mr. Genius, I sure hadn't thought of that," Jim mocked bitterly. "Multiple plans Sebbie, multiple plans." He said tapping his temple with a long, thin finger

"You only had one for tonight," Sebastian reminded him.

Jim shouted, insulted "Which I came up with on the spot! What were you saying? 'Let's just shoot them and take the kids'."

"It would have worked!" Sebastian yelled.

"I _need_ Mycroft!" Jim hissed, "I need him for other plans; I can't just kill him willy-nilly!"

Sebastian huffed and sank into the seat a bit deeper until he was on the verge of sliding out onto the floor. Several minutes passed without a word between the two partners in crime.

Finally Sebastian grimly broke the silence, "We followed him all the way to Baker Street because he wanted us to know he knew we were following him."

Jim, with equal solemnity added, "He thinks we work for Holmes. He thinks everything we've done has been Sherlock's doing."

He peeled the ice away from his eyes and pointedly said, "Which was my design, by the by,"

Sebastian grimly shook his head, and quickly stopped due to the throbbing pain that felt like sewing needles pressing in and out of his skull. "No. He knew we were part of it somewhere. He's always known about us. That was my fault, mainly. He knows we're wrapped up in this somehow, he just doesn't yet know how."

Jim flung his arm over his eyes dramatically, "Stop talking Sebbie, I think you have a concussion,"

* * *

**I love these two characters so much. They're technically protagonists, since Genil is the villian, but they can't help being villanous.**


	89. A Man Needs a Plan

Morning broke with Mycroft sitting in his dusty upstairs lounge, flipping through the papers he had worked desperately to have delivered late that night. He had showered, shaved, and even slept, but somehow he could never in the meanwhile push one niggling thought out from the front of his mind, the one thought that kept his weary mind from complete rest.

His phone was sitting on the table next to the empty decanter of brandy. It was waiting for a call or text from Anthea. One that would ask how the children were so that he could tell her not to leave her house, he would send his car for her.

The longer he waited for the text, the more certain he was it would never come.

The children would be up soon. When Sherlock was younger, he always rose with the sun and was delighted on the mornings when he could make himself get up when the world was still dark, much to the family's horror. Mycroft would need to make breakfast for them somehow. He did have mediocre cooking skills, he just did not have the lager to accompany these skills. Eggs would suffice for children.

As he carefully, quickly read through his papers, not even bothering to stop and wonder how on earth he was supposed to show up for work and care for his infant sibling simultaneously, he found himself making plans again, something he had discouraged the night before when grasping the reality of Sherlock being a toddler had been grappling with caring for Sherlock the toddler. Now that he had a spare moment, he felt a plan would be most called for. Especially before the distractions awoke.

He would require a nanny eventually. He could always ask some of the older females around the office who they recommended, that wouldn't be difficult. The tricky bit would be curbing his habit of working sporadically as needed and caring for the two toddlers. They would require a certain amount of the day allotted to personal attention, such as can only be given by a paternal figure and cannot be supplemented by a paid nanny. He would need to be in attendance at a regular hour to supply this demand.

John's family would eventually need to be informed about John's condition. He could always set up an appointment with the infamous Harriet Watson, perhaps in a few days.

Eventually there would have to be school, perhaps a pre-kindergarten scheme would allow him a few hours of freedom every day. Sherlock might even benefit from the exposure to other children.

The first thing necessary would be a trip to a local, discreet, pediatric clinic to check for any irregularities that may have been caused by the drug. From there Mycroft could work off of their charts and start funding research into a cure. Though before he could take the children to the clinic, he'd need some fake documentation to prove they were his children, and he had not, actually, stolen them.

In accordance with a search for the cure, there was also going to be an immediate search for Dr. Genil, just until Sherlock was able to retake the case.

As he gently placed one paper face-down on his lap two very masculine, adult screams erupted from the bedroom behind him, and he sighed. So much for all of his planning. At least there were some weights lifted from his chest.

* * *

**I knew there was something important about the 22 of July! Congrats on a new Prince, England! Oh, and also my Library books were due. :P**


	90. Good Morning

He cautiously opened the bedroom door and discreetly peered inside.

Sherlock lay half on the floor, half wrapped in the sheet like a caterpillar in his cocoon. One free arm was flung across the floor, trying desperately to gain traction while his legs were trapped, tangled by the part of the sheet that was still tucked into the bed. John had clearly taken one good look at the situation he'd found himself in and had bolted from the bed, taking one pillow with him and huddling; conservatively covering himself all the while, behind the wardrobe.

"Good Morning," Mycroft said as blandly as he could.

"My-croft!" Sherlock shouted accusingly, still baffled beyond reason and fighting his sleepiness spread across the floor.

"I suppose there are one or two things you will wish to discuss, but before I can spark a mid-morning conversation I would like you to direct your attention to an assortment of bathrobes in the wardrobe Dr. Watson is cowed behind,"

John's voice trembled as he spat from behind the furniture "What the _hell_?"

"Five minutes," Mycroft said, holding back his smile until the very last moment when he shut the door. Thank goodness he wasn't responsible for _them_ anymore. He'd have gone mad!

* * *

**I-I did it... At this very moment my Winglock fanfiction has exactly 1895 views. Sorry Winglock fans, I won't be able to update anymore...it's too perfect. :') I don't think my OCD has ever been so satisfied! So...so happy!  
QvQb **


	91. Feeling Exposed?

Mycroft called a chef from the Diogenes to cook a quick breakfast for the three of them and after a wealth of muttering in French (Mycroft had never informed the chef he too spoke French, fluently in fact) the man agreed to a hearty English fare with some French accents.

After a few moments Sherlock stormed into the parlor wrapped in Mycroft's navy blue robe, fuming silently and glaring furiously at Mycroft, who sat innocuously on a plush chair, leaving the sofa open to Sherlock's aggravated flopping.

"Take a seat," Mycroft gestured to a nearby leather chair, knowing full well that Sherlock would ignore his offer in preference of the empty sofa, where he could glare at Mycroft at an angle, or look off at the wall and ignore him testily if he so chose.

He violently threw himself onto the couch, arms crossed tightly over his chest, as if in fear of the robe coming loose at all, though Mycroft never knew Sherlock to be coy.

"Feeling exposed, brother dear?" Mycroft teased, seeing a rare opportunity and seizing it by the throat.

"Yes, frankly," Sherlock snapped, "What am I doing at _your house_ of all places?"

Mycroft eased himself back into the chair as he heard the Chef clanging pans in the kitchen comfortingly. He'd quite forgotten giving him a key to the door adjacent to the Diogenes club.

"Ah, I see you don't recall much of last night. It's the Christmas party 2005 all over again," Mycroft mused, looking up as the door to the bedroom quietly open and shut and John shyly crept into the room clutching tightly to the thick green cotton dressing gown that was much too large for him, looking very much as though he'd rather walk home in the buff than hear how he came to in a bed nude with Sherlock at Mycroft's house.

"In all fairness," Mycroft thought, "It might not be a story I would like to hear myself,"

"Take a seat, John," Mycroft repeated his gesture towards the chair. John slunk over to the appointed chair shamefully, with the air of one expecting mercy.

"Please Mycroft," He seemed to say in that painfully frightened glance, "Be gentle, use tact. And for God's sake don't torment me with it," he rubbed the smooth embroidery of the name 'Holmes' on the robe with a detached air.

"So, breakfast will be prepared in just a few minutes, I'll have my assistant make a quick run for your clothes, it would be most congenial for you to join-"

"For God's sake! Spit it out!" Sherlock surprised him by barking.

Mycroft wordlessly handed Sherlock the file he'd been rifling through that morning, everything the British Government knew about Dr. Genil and his ties.

Sherlock stared at it open mouthed, looked up to Mycroft for one moment, then let his shoulders sag and swore.

"What?" John cried, stunned at the expression on Sherlock's face. Exasperation at his brother was nothing, but open mouthed surprise was a rarity.

Sherlock held up a single picture for John. For a moment, John stared at it, mouth agape. Then, he repeated Sherlock's swear, secretly relieved.

"Hell,"

"Hell,"

"Hell," Mycroft agreed slipping one stray paper into the file for safe-keeping. "I take it that Genil's rather unique research has been brought to your attention before."

Sherlock flipped madly through the papers, unresponsive to any but the most direct form of communication.

"Twice," John filled in, "Once for each of us,"

"I see," Mycroft absorbed the information in his noncommittal way.

"Thank you," John blurted out suddenly, looking ashamed as soon as the phrase slipped away from him.

Mycroft heard the gratitude, but paid it no mind. He also heard the embarrassment, and felt it was better to spare them all the excruciating detail of their brief interment as toddlers.

There was one thing he would have liked to address, but it would be better brought up over a light breakfast. The chef rang the bell to indicate he was through with the kitchen, and that three plates had been left on the table.

He texted Anthea to remain at her house, his car was coming to take her to Baker Street and he needed her to reply to all of his messages, no matter how inane or short.

She texted back "O.k."

"Won't you join me for a little breakfast?" Mycroft said, hoping Sherlock could hear simply by his tone that there was something he wanted to discuss. "It will take some time for my assistant to get your things."

Sherlock peered around the room, gathering stories, perhaps deducing the evening they had spent rough-housing in that very parlor.

"Fire your maid," he simply suggested.


	92. Perhaps an Experiment

French breakfasts are tasteful, English breakfasts are hardy. A combination of the two turned out to be an interesting sensation.

Mycroft waited until Sherlock had finished a few forkfuls of food, which would have been his usual limit so far as meals were concerned, before cautiously introducing the subject of Moriarty.

"What about him?" Sherlock petulantly replied while shoveling bacon into an open, expectant mouth.

John nibbled his tenth or eleventh piece of bacon, suddenly looking pasty and ill. Mycroft incorrectly attributed his indisposition to the bacon.

"It was a rather close call last night when he broke in and held me at gun point. He seemed to know somehow that you had been transformed."

He paused and let his meaning sink in. Sherlock swallowed some water with the same relish he would have had had he swallowed some cleaning fluid.

"Yes, Moriarty knows." He downplayed quietly, "I'm rather sorry if he gave you a scare,"

Mycroft stared at his brother with some little amazement. Finally he barked a harsh, uncomfortable laugh.

"Right, a scare. That's what I had," he sourly said, pressing down on his plate with his fork, digging the prongs into the porcelain with measured viciousness.

John was the first to break into the fierce, unpleasant atmosphere. "He doesn't mean it like that," he assured Mycroft, "Genil had some contracts with Moriarty that he broke. Moriarty and his assassin have also been subject to…transformations as well."

"Well, he was certainly an adult last night." Mycroft said, a bit tenderly. "The main reason I ask is that I'm curious as to what purpose he could possibly have in either you or John as a toddler."

Sherlock had never had the chance to master the art of talking while eating, and so he chewed while he contemplated Mycroft's point.

"Maybe an experiment?" John suggested, "He needs a cure just as much as we do, maybe he wanted to try something on one of us to see what would help?"

"But he didn't try anything and we changed back anyway," Sherlock pointed out. That would suggest either the cure was something we were exposed to all three times, or, and this is by far more likely given that we always come to as adults after a night's rest, the formula is not permanent. After a given amount of time a victim will revert back to their original form."

"Even so, it could still be useful to him to tell how long a period that would be," Mycroft said, enjoying the chance to muse over such little matters.

"But Moran was transformed at the same time as me, remember?" John interrupted, "He was an adult hours before I was."

"_Sebastian_ Moran?" Mycroft asked.

"Yes,"

"Small world," he enigmatically finished.

* * *

**200 reviews. Every single one of them immensely precious. I have heard all of your voices and each and every one of you wondrous, beautiful readers has influence Childish in some way. Thank you all so mucho!**


	93. Embarrasment

The doorbell rang and Mycroft admitted one very tired Anthea, who stole little glances at the men who, just the night before, she'd been cooing over. She particularly blushed recalling how she had fondly kissed John Watson's round little cheek.

Sherlock and John had all but licked their plates clean and accepted their clothes without a word. Mycroft pointed them to a room where they each could change, which they did with little interaction and when they came out fully clothes they each thanked him for breakfast and quietly walked out of the house. Mycroft had asked Anthea to escort them to Baker Street in the hired car and return promptly to work where he would be waiting to give her a security detail and 24 hr. surveillance.

"Alright _dad_," she teased roughly.

He did not, however, say she couldn't relate the entire night as she had experienced it to John and Sherlock, who listened with a fair amount of skepticism and incredulity.

"_Mycroft_ punched him? Are you serious?"

"He actually _ran_? Like, with his legs?"

"A whole flight of stairs? You must be out of your mind!"

"That can't be all the food in his house,"

Arriving at Baker Street, a wealth of information about their newest enemy tucked away beneath Sherlock's arm, the two detectives felt slightly different about the eldest Holmes.

Sherlock for his part made a mental note to try not to let it affect his attitude towards Mycroft in the future, John saw Mycroft in a whole new light.


	94. England Would Fall

"Well, this is what happens…" Sherlock said opening the door to their humble home and ushering John inside.

"Happens?" John asked ducking beneath his arm.

"Mrs. Hudson's been gone for a whole three weeks and suddenly England is falling. The British Government is a daycare service,"

John laughed.

-End Ch 3—


	95. Special Bonus: Good Morning Tiger

**As promised: it's the morning after with Sebastian and Jim! Thanks to TheMysteriousGeek2345 for suggesting! And commenting!**

* * *

Morning broke in a derelict apartment in a seedy part of London. Sebastian Moran made a cursory glance of his temporary apartment, counting the locks on the door and making sure they were all still locked.

He put his head back into the plush leather arm rest he'd been using for a pillow and wondered why he wasn't sleeping in his bed.

Then suddenly, the night before hit him like a screaming eighteen wheeler careening down on an empty highway.

Laboratory, Gas, Sherlock, Panic, Baker Street, John, Boss, Toddlers, Ravioli, ect.

Oh, no.

He shot out of his cocoon of blankets and collapsed into a heap on the floor. Quickly righting himself he had a momentary panic attack as he decided whether or not to check on his newly shrunken boss or to wait until the sleeping child came to on his own.

In the end he decided to put off his responsibility for a few more hours. He stumbled into his kitchen in a daze and made himself a bowl of cereal.

With every spoonful he felt a little bit more prepared to face the day, and a little less afraid of the daunting challenges caring for a pint-sized psychopath would bring. Maybe he could take the kid to the park. Maybe some women who wanted to be mothers would hit on him. Maybe he could score some free babysitters. Maybe he could score some other kinds of services.

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

Then his bedroom door opened. Jim, stark nude and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with the back of his fist yawned a greeting, hunting around for the milk and a bowl to join Sebastian in his morning cereal.

"Have you no shame?" Sebastian asked, averting his eyes as best he could.

"Sorry," Jim said smoothing back his frazzled hair self-consciously, "I only like _my_ hairbrushes, I don't want to risk getting lice from you or something. Or fleas."

"Yeah, that's what I was talking about." Sebastian moaned sarcastically.

"And good morning to you, Tiger. Get it? Fleas? Tiger?" he squinted around, hungry for nutrients and to exhausted to be at all curious about the rather extraordinary position he found himself in. He complained "I'm not really funny until I've had my coffee..."

Jim picked out a stool and perched on it, pouring a mountain of cereal into an enormous soup bowl and preparing to tackle it with a large cooking spoon.

Sebastian decided the best time to test the waters would be immediately after Jim had woken up, and not later when he remembered how powerful he was and how prone to indignity he tended to be.

"So…last night...how're we feeling about that, eh?"

Jim chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. "I don't remember a thing. Where're my clothes?"

Sebastian pushed his soggy breakfast around the crater of milk absently. "You don't remember _anything_?"

"Nope. Nothing," Jim says through a mouth full of crunchy, sugar-coated brilliance, "Did we go to that pub by that one coffee shop, the one with the Mexican theme and the glow lanterns? Remember that night?"

"You were kicked out and banned, so no, we couldn't go back. You really don't recall anything?"

"Not a darn thing,"

Sebastian hurriedly shoved a spoonful of cereal in his mouth. He would have to either think of a suitable lie that would fool his boss, or clue him into the night he'd spent at Baker Street watching cartoons. Neither sounded pleasant.

"So, Seb…" Jim paused and waited, baiting the trap. Sebastian shoveled a few more nervous spoonfulls of cereal into his already-full mouth, playing for time.

"What did you do to me last night?" Jim purred, not missing the draft in the apartment chilling his abundant bare flesh.

"Mell, moo shee…" He sloshed.

"Swallow," Jim commanded.

Sebastian swallowed thickly.

"Hum… well the evil scientist trapped you in a room with Holmes and gassed you," Sebastian blurted out suddenly. As soon as the words passed through his lips he mentally kicked himself, wishing he could've invented a believable piece of fiction on the spot to save him. _Anything_ would have been better than the truth.

"Uh-huh,"

"And the gas made you shrink to about…" he measured the approximate height with his hands. "Yay high. You degenerated into… about a two year old, I'd imagine,"

"I see,"

"You and Holmes both,"

"I see,"

"Then I tried to rescue you, but I couldn't see, so I accidentally grabbed Holmes instead,"

"You would,"

"And that doctor fellow took you home with him before I could double back,"

"Joy," Jim said, his face a mask of bemusement.

"So I took the little detective back to Baker Street and after a short standoff made a trade with the doctor for you, but you wouldn't let me carry you to the car so we had to stay for a bit."

"Of course,"

"After a light dinner, Watson and I had a little chat about that Genil bastard, and we decided on a truce until we could discover a cure for your condition."

"Uh-huh,"

"Then John gave you a cookie and we went home and I put you to bed," Sebastian said mildly, "Now you're a man. Truce up,"

Jim stared at him for some minutes without talking. He quietly ate his cereal, waiting for Sebastian to supply him with a _real_ answer.

When his bowl was empty save for the dregs he finally asked: "How much of that is true?"

"On my Mother's grave, that's how it happened," Sebastian said, holding up a Scout's Honor salute.

Jim shrugged and drank deeply from his bowl.

"Fine then, don't tell me. I'll figure it out: you know I will,"

"Cross my heart," Sebastian made the motion, "It happened just as I said it,"

Jim slouched in the chair and tossed the bowl Frisbee style into the sink where it shattered into four large pieces with a frightening smash.

"You know the penalty for lying to me..." He scowled. Sebastian knew, however, after years of (somewhat) companionship and (tentative) partnership, when Jim was being sincerely threatening.

"Cross my heart," he insisted.

"And hope to die?" Jim pressed.

Sebastian smirked, picking up his bowl and sauntering around the table. "Never," he said.

* * *

**Prepare for the final ark of the Childish saga, coming soon (but not too soon, that'd be cruel)! A good title for the next part would be appreciated. Remember, Part 1 "What've I done" Part 2 "Turning Tables" Part 3 "O "Brother Where art thou?" Part 4 "...?" Leave comments for ideas, or leave coded messages outside my house. :)**

**P.S: I have a bunch of favorite quotes from this story. One of them is: "We're becoming nudists," Another is "Crunchy, sugar-coated brilliance" My parents wouldn't let me have the amazing cereals like Fruit Loops or Lucky Charms, so I'm living vicariously through Jim.**


	96. Fear No Evil

**_Yea,  
though I walk through the valley of the shadow  
of death, I will fear no evil_**

* * *

"This is a bad idea," John complained peering through the darkened hallway.

"Shh…" Sherlock hushed him curtly, tugging his sleeve and moving stealthily through the crisp darkness. His footsteps echoed too loudly against the black floor, bouncing off the eerie white walls and drifting through the lab, giving away their position to anybody listening.

"This is the worst idea!" John hissed.

"Shhh-shh!" Sherlock angrily said, sliding his hand along the wall and leading John forward at a painstaking crawl.

John inched behind him nervously. The quiet lab reminded of a crypt, filled with silent echoes and the stillness of death stalking their every breath. Footsteps reverberated maliciously. If one held still for a moment, one could almost imagine they could hear the blood sluicing through their veins. The dead air seemed to tingle with shadows, and at every turn John imagined someone would be standing in wait for them, ready for an ambush.

He just couldn't shake the feeling something was hunting them, stalking them from just out of sight.

He would have to have been an idiot to try and tell Sherlock as much.

Sherlock paused, causing John to bump into him for the fourth time as he pulled a small printed map out of his pocket and twisted the end of a flashlight no longer than John's pinkie finger, flooding the map with a heavenly beam of white light.

"The next hallway on the right, and all the way down. That's where it'll be," he said killing the glorious cone of light with a wrenching motion and shoving the map back into the recesses of his coat.

"What if he's there?" John asked, blinking away the smears of green light still flashing in his retinas. On top of being blind, he now had the added debility of seeing shapes that weren't there.

"Odds are high he won't be expecting us, on the off chance he chooses today of all days to visit the office." Sherlock said calmly, unaffected by the light, or the odds of getting caught, as expected.

"I don't like this," John hummed nervously. He reached behind him and reassuringly patted the heavy bulge of his gun that rested on the small of his back.

"We need the chemical notes for my analysis and the evidence Willa Erdrich had been compiling."

"Can't we find them during the day?"

"Who breaks into a lab during the day? Shh,"

Sherlock suddenly broke away from the wall and lead John sharply to the right, blindly ambling into a black corridor.

After a few minutes wandering through the abyss, Sherlock stopped and John heard a sharp metallic click. With an ear-piercing squeal the door to the lab swung open. John followed Sherlock inside.

The blessed cone of light reappeared, casting Sherlock's face in sharp contrast with the darkness surrounding them. He shined his flashlight on a long row of drawers, sweeping a spotlight up and down the frame.

The signal couldn't be clearer: Start looking.

John shuffled blindly through random papers, wondering what Sherlock would consider significant.

"What exactly are we searching for?"

"Look for a woman's handwriting," Sherlock hissed.

John flipped through paper after paper, finding only the neat, box-shaped scrawl of a man.

"What if he destroyed it?"

"He can't have destroyed all of his notes, maybe we can reconstruct the formula from them and construct it into an antidote."

John took a few moments pondering over some footnotes added to typed sheets of numbers and letters. He became excited when he recognized the long, loopy writing of a woman.

"Look…" He began to point out the paper to Sherlock when the ceiling broke open and a torrent of buzzing white light flooded over him, blinding him momentarily.


	97. Let There Be Light

John dropped the papers, disoriented in the ocean of light. He groped for Sherlock, having lost him in the confusion and gripped the elbow of his great black coat, fearful of Sherlock drifting off and leaving him stranded, adrift in the jungle his stunned eyes created out of blurred colors and panicking corneas.

A voice crept over the floor and leapt out at them, as it mildly recited: "And God said: "Let there be light,"

Sherlock pulled away from John as he rubbed his eyes bitterly, trying to smear away the shock and begin to see shapes again. A moment before, he'd been desperate for a light to cut through the black cloak of darkness. Now he could not keep his eyes open, they watered and squinted shut, reeling from pain and surprise. He heard Sherlock's feet slapping against the tiles, he heard his body bump into a desk, rattling some glassware, but, more importantly, he heard the gentle click of the lock on the door.

He looked up, finally able to tolerate squinting through the light, and saw Sherlock tackle the closed door, slapping his palms futilely against the unfeeling wood.

Sherlock loudly swore, kicking angrily at the door, which was as solid as the wall.

"What happened?" John cried.

"He's locked us in," Sherlock said bitterly, feeling rueful at having been lured into an obvious trap.

"Genil?" John added insult to his injury by forcing him to nod in acceptance of this little fact.

* * *

**My, my, this is a bit not good.**

** For all you fans of _the perks of being a wallflower_ I'm on Youtube going through Charlie's playlist. I'm almost done, I'm at "Nights in White Satin". It's a magical journey, because I find comments about other people who've made the same musical pilgrimage. It's some really amazing music!**

**Love always,  
****Charlie **


	98. Trapped

**Do you want to know what I hate? I hate when sentences get lost in copy-pasting stories. It's never unimportant sentences either, it's always the uber important ones that people need to understand the WHOLE REST OF THE STORY! So I'm posting this again, with those two missing sentences, and hopefully a new chapter soon. If I don't loose it like an idiot again.**

* * *

John crept around the desks meekly. He forgot about his discomforted sight and tried to swallow the tingling knot that sat in his chest just below his throat when he thought about Sherlock's hands being dwarfed by his own that first fateful night, the vertigo of fear that had struck him then and there and lingered wherever the name Genil took its taint.

He reached Sherlock's side and stared at the door, as if focusing all their concentrated fears and angers towards the cursed lock would make it click in their favor.

A haunting chuckle erupted from behind the door, so close John could have sworn Genil had been standing right in front of them. He jumped.

"Let us out, doctor!" Sherlock boomed, all of his caution and stealth thrown to the wind, "There is a Detective Inspector downstairs waiting to arrest you, he'll notice when we don't meet up with him."

This was news to John.

"No there isn't. You two came here alone. Only two people triggered the silent alarms downstairs and up. I saw you leave your cab, you were alone then as well. No one knows you're here."

Sherlock could almost see the wolfish smile beaming through the door, the madly grinning, gnashing mouth showing every tooth in ecstasy of his captured prey. A sliver of cold water dropped down his spine leaving a trail of goose bumps tracing over his shoulders. He shuddered.

"And even if they know you came, no one can tell what you'll be when you leave," he finished subtlety.

"Don't you dare!" John shouted, feigning outrage as best he could manage, hoping that the vein of fear that gripped at his chest was mute in his voice. He suddenly had the mad feeling that the rest of the room behind them was closing in around them, and the only salvation lie beyond the sealed door. He shook away the mad notion by simply looking around, but the claustrophobia remained.

"A silent alarm still calls the police," Sherlock said, "You won't be able to smuggle two children out from under the noses of Scotland Yard."

"Of course I can," Genil said lightly, "It's the easiest thing in the world for someone who really understands the twists and turns of his building."

"What I don't understand," Genil lazily continued, flicking his words around casually, "Is how you two unceasingly manage to convert after a short period of time. To my best knowledge I've managed to successfully poison you, Mr. Holmes, no less than twice."

Sherlock paused, shooting a wry glance at John. He toyed with the idea of telling Genil his formula was faulty, that after a day he and John had always reverted back. However the pull to be clever was too powerful.

"You want to know what your magic potion's one weakness is, right?" Sherlock growled through the door. "You want to be prepared for any of your _clients_ to complain? Yes or no?"

"Belittling my work does not detract one iota from the magnificence of it, Mr. Holmes," Genil said, with a bite of anger, "Eternal youth is just as pretty as it sounds."

"But it's flawed, it's not perfect," Sherlock pressed, "There's a common household item that can completely undo it. Dr. Watson discovered it the very same night I needed it; an antidote. You want it to be perfect before you sell it, you want to know what could go wrong; I'll tell you,"

"That's very generous of you,"

"But not for free: everything has a price. I want freedom, impunity from your pretty poison." Sherlock said forcefully, pressing his head against the door angrily.

Genil made a sound that resembled wetly sucking in air through his teeth. "Steep," he said.

"Cheap, compared to what you get out of it," Sherlock insisted. John shot him a frightened glance that spoke volumes. He seemed to be saying: "_I see what you're doing, and very clever and all, but can you think of something else just in case? This could turn sour quite quickly_," with just a brief tightening of his facial muscles.

"But money will not absolve me of a murder charge. Is that your game Mr. Holmes?" Genil shot back, "To get free and drive me low with your accusations?"

Sherlock grimaced for only John to see.

"You said it yourself: there still isn't a body. No evidence of homicide or foul play anywhere," He reluctantly spat.

"Oh, no? Well, I'm sure you aim to fix that. You are the great Sherlock Holmes after all," Genil gloated softly, dangerously.

Sherlock played with odds in his head, mouthing quietly, thinking quickly, and blinking rapidly.

"Alright, you want to turn me into a child, fine. But let my friend go first and I'll tell you what the antidote is."

"Sherlock!" John hissed. Sherlock turned to him with a grim, serious expression, and winked.

"Then you get everything you want: There's no one to investigate you, you can fix your formula for sale: perfect." He finished proudly, mouthing something at John while extending his hand expectantly.

John understood immediately and handed him his gun.

"Hmm, that's very diplomatically organized Mr. Holmes. It calculates the most favorable outcome for both parties," Genil said. Sherlock could hear the grin widening, his teeth bearing like a wild animal. John's gun seemed to radiate the heat it had absorbed resting at the small of his back. It made his hand sweaty.

"Although, seeing as how I have the upper hand currently, I'd like to renegotiate." He laughed. "Here's how I wanted this evening to go: I planned to turn you both into children, tuck you away in my little chateau down by the Thames, deal with the two stragglers you've had dogging me for the past few weeks and perhaps shred some rather incriminating files I've left lying around.

"The issue you've brought up with a probable antidote is troubling, though if I had some willing test subjects I wouldn't mind running through all the probable candidates until I find the one you are most likely referring to. Volunteers for such long term and intricate experiments are hard to come by, yet I seem to have stumbled upon two able applicants who are already primed for adaptation."

"Bastard!" John broke in suddenly, but Genil carried on thoughtlessly, as though he were talking to himself.

"It has occurred to me to kill you before, Mr. Holmes, but the possibility of utilizing you for the furthering of my experiments has proven thoroughly tempting. I do so hate waste," He said with sudden distaste, "Your first induction to the exciting world of genetic sciences was, I must admit, a complete accident, but the exciting opportunities you've given me since then were all premeditated. Luck and chance have kept us from truly embracing the symbiotic relationship between subject and scientist. Tonight you will achieve your full potential in helping usher in a new age of health and science with your contributions to the body of my research."


	99. Gas Mask

**60,000 views! And this chapter has only just begun! Thank you Fanfiction for reading and re-reading this (admittedly massive) story! I could not and would not have made it this far without all of your loving, hilarious reviews.**

* * *

Sherlock flared his nostrils in disgust, and snarled: "If you're done spouting your monologue, could you do me a kind favor and just kill me now?"

John swiveled around the room, eyes grazing over every air vent, searching for an escape. There were no windows and no other doors. Genil suddenly and inexplicably growing a conscience was their only hope.

Genil chuckled darkly. "Enthusiasm for the project always grows after the first phase. I will then say adieu, and meet with you gentlemen when you are feeling a bit more…vulnerable? Hehe!"

Sherlock pounded on the door mechanically with his fist and motioned John to do the same. John flailed and kicked at the door, uncertain what Sherlock was planning, only certain that it was deeper than the futile exercise they were doing at that moment.

"Genil!" John cried angrily, imagining the ghostly image of the man he had grown accustomed to studying from the candid photograph Sherlock had pinned to the corkboard start to mist away and drift into darkness maliciously, leaving them stranded without hope of escape.

Sherlock held up his hand and motioned for a halt. He pressed his ear against the door and listened. He heard nothing, just what he had hoped to hear.

He swept John behind him and backed up to a safe distance, aiming at the gleaming silver lock jutting out of the door. An Explosion ricocheted through the closed room. Sherlock cringed and made a shield of his arms which he put up before his eyes and from somewhere just behind them, John heard an assortment of glass shatter. He turned to find a row of flasks reduced to just their bases, their necks had all been broken off.

"The bullet bounced right off," John said, observing the scene minutely.

"Thanks for the commentary," Sherlock snapped unkindly, "Is there another way out?"

John looked around again, searching uselessly for something he knew wasn't there.

"No," he admitted finally, "Just the air vents,"

Sherlock tore open a drawer, flinging papers mercilessly to the floor until the whole thing was gutted around his feet. Then, he moved on to the next one.

"The air vents are rigged with the gas, we would not get far," he murmured, nimble hands sending great wings of paper shooting through the air.

"What are you looking for?" John asked.

Sherlock looked up at him obliquely, pausing momentarily in his vicious attack on the mad scientist's reports to bark: "Gas mask," and then he turned back to his desperate search.


	100. Murphy's Law

John nodded and immediately began opening cabinets and knocking over bottles and boxes labeled with various chemical equations. His hands roved ceaselessly for the leathery folds of a mask, the thick, knobby plastic that would filter breathable oxygen for one of them.

He knew, in some sick, hopeless part of his mind, that Genil had followed them to the lab, he'd set up the gas in the vents with the knowledge that eventually he and Sherlock would be trapped in that room. It was all premeditated, cold and concise with a level of detachment only truly embraced by the practiced sadist. He had left them in their prison cell soon to be gas chamber to wait in agony; to go slightly mad from the sheer suspense, to horror at the very air they breathed as they waited for the eventual poison to be added. The last three attacks had been surprises, but this not so. There would be no mask.

He and Sherlock worked parallel to each other, inching down the lab in a flurry of fluttering papers and flying boxes.

John reached the end of the cabinets without any sign of a mask, just as he had expected. He had hoped against hope that simply by knowing that finding a mask was unlikely, one would magically appear. That seemed to be the way everything else worked, when he wanted something, it would be gone, and when he didn't want something, it seemed to be forever in his way. Murphy's Law seemed to be the only law he'd never broken.

Looking up at the door John saw something he wanted, and something he did not want standing in its way.

For a moment, he was struck speechless by the sheer luck, and unluck of the situation. Words failed him utterly. Then, with a surge of panic he screamed the only word that his shock-addled mind could compute.

"Sherlock!" he pointed at the two men standing smarmily at the front end of the lab.

Sherlock, ever more thoughtful, shouted: "Hold the door!" just as Sebastian Moran closed it with a fearfully final snap.

* * *

**Stupid Sniper! Stupid, stupid, stupid! Raaaah!**

**Oh, and p.s. WE MADE IT TO 100 FREAKING CHAPTERS OMG OMG!**

**AND PEOPLE ARE _STILL READING_ IT!** **OMG OMG omgomgomgomgomg!**

**:') I've never been so honored to simply write for a fandom before. I finally went to deviantart and asked the person whose picture inspired me to write Childish to come and read it, and she said "Wow... 98 chapters...it might take a while". Thank you all so very-berry much for reading and reviewing, continue to do so and somehow we might even make it to the end together. **

**Geez, I'm such a sap. I've never cried just posing a chapter before. All these little milestones make me so happy. I need a tissue. ;)**


	101. Oops'

"Well," Jim started to talk, but Sherlock rushed at the two of them, throwing Moran out of his way thoughtlessly and sending him barreling into Moriarty.

He grabbed the handle and yanked it a few times, even though he already knew the door locked itself from the outside. The jamming of the mechanism was no surprise, but still somehow an epic disappointment.

"What?" Jim sputtered, shoving Moran to the side as Sherlock, his hopes dashed, confronted the little man with all of his rage.

"You idiot! He's locked us in!" He spat down at him viciously.

Jim's eyes became wide and his face puckered silently with embarrassment. He made a small, mousey squeak that sounded suspiciously like the beginning of the word 'oops'.

"Sebastian, break it down." He recovered softly as Sherlock rushed past him and emptied another drawer, not so much in hopes of suddenly finding a mask, but out of sheer lack of useful things to do. Sebastian swore and kicked the lock, then let loose a string of swears as he gripped his ankle in agony.

"Break it down, Seb!" Jim pleaded, suddenly horror struck.

John gripped the cabinet for support, feeling a detached sense of amazement. This could _not_ be happening. The only two people in the world who would know exactly what would happen to them, their own antagonists facing the exact same fate. It was a sick, unbelievable irony and it was bloody poor timing.

He turned in silent disbelief and felt a ripple of shock course through him. There, right where he'd been checking when the door had opened, was a long clear mask, lying inconspicuously like a God-sent miracle.

"Sherlock! I found one!" he grabbed it and carefully scrutinized it, turning it over like a mask of gold. Sherlock immediately ran across the room to rejoice in his discovery.

John's face fell, "Oh, I didn't realize…" Ice pumped into his blood as the last hopes for salvation were dashed and shattered.

"What?" Sherlock asked eagerly.

"There's no filter. It's been torn off," John pointed to a gaping hole in the mask where the contaminated air was supposed to be cleansed.

Sherlock took it from John with lightly trembling fingers and held it to the light in triumph.

"This actually might be exactly what we've been looking for," he said reaching for his magnifying glass, "It could prove Genil used the gas on Willa Erdrich, if only…"

His voice tapered off as an ominous hissing grew from somewhere above their heads.

* * *

**Boo! The Cliffhanger strikes again!**

**It occurred to me yesterday that repeated cliffhangers in every single chapter is how real Victorian authors wrote their stories, since their stories were published in magazines and needed to be memorable enough to keep audiences from issue to issue.**

**Fanfiction is like a daily-updated Literary Magazine. The Strand 2.0. I'm just keeping with tradition.**


	102. Claustrophobia

"No…NO! Not again!" Jim shouted, covering his nose and mouth with his hands.

Sebastian slammed his shoulder against the door in a futile effort to break it open. After one particularly rough jarring he roared angrily and pulled his gun out from the back of his pants.

John turned and watched the play between partners in crime and seemed to see the whole act in slow motion. They had never once turned to face their other two prisoners whom they were trapped with. Moran was wholly occupied with forcing the door open, hearing only Jim's commanding voice slowly increase in pitch until it resembled a scream, as the master criminal spun around the room, panic settling in like a fine layer of dust on his shoulders. The probability of escape and the scenarios of capture all seemed to weigh on him and the pressure temporarily drove him to a slight fit of hysterics.

His face was red.

The explosion of the firearm rumbled in the brightly lit room. The 'ping' of the bullet bouncing off the metal was coupled with a noise that sounded like a fat hand slapping the wall. John watched Sebastian Moran fling himself backward dramatically and dully registered a hot needle-like sensation in his shoulder.

A moment later the pain hit.


	103. Bleeding Distraction

John clasped his shoulder, reeling silently. Most of his attention was absorbed by the sinister hiss, which grew in magnitude and horror as it continued, like a terrible snake in the vents.

He looked down and saw a massive tear in the sleeve of his jumper. He pulled away the fabric and saw a small tear in his flesh. A chunk of skin, no wider than a pencil, had been peeled away just below his shoulder, missing everything important and leaving him with what would one day be a very impressive scar on his upper arm.

At the moment, it was merely a profusely bleeding distraction.


	104. Descent

**I always update at night so that people who read this story will have a bright shiny chapter in the morning. Or an unresolved cliffhanger that will lend tension to your whole day. All except for reflectiveless who always reads them as soon as they come out. And reviews.**

* * *

John spun around and saw Sherlock's quiet, mild face full of defeat and fear. Like a true English gentleman, he'd become a grim, determined statue, his pride worn outwardly in a final show of solemn defiance.

Moriarty ran his fingers through his hair anxiously. This was not the meeting he had planned. He hardly noticed his partner had ceased trying to smash down the immovable door, he was more concerned with having been outwitted by someone who hadn't been trying to outwit him at all.

He did notice, however, when said partner wrapped his thick beige scarf around his nose and mouth. He made some small discomforting noises as his fingers instinctively tried to rip the suffocating fabric away from his face. John added 'startled' to the ever-growing list of emotions he thought he'd never see come out of Moriarty.

"Nuh-uh," John heard Sebastian grunt as he forcefully held his bosses head in place with the strong grip of one hand while tightening the scarf with the other hand. "One of us has to get out of this and make it back to the flat, and I'm not even remotely clever enough to negotiate with…hauhh…"

John looked to Sherlock, hoping that he had seen Moran's display and could try and wind his scarf around his face and stave off the inevitable transformation, but it was too late. Sherlock sank, as if in slow-motion to his knees. His face became blurred, like wet ink smeared across a page.

Before John knew it he had joined Sherlock on a crest-shaped decent to the floor.

* * *

"_Sherlock? Where are you going to sleep?"_

_"In the kitchen. Standing up. We have a rodent problem, and I have a riding crop solution."_

**I'm thinking of writing a whole new story around this conversation. It tickles me so.**


	105. Metamorphosis

Before John knew it he had joined Sherlock on a crest-shaped decent to the floor.

He no longer felt panic, he was supremely detached from anything and everything. His body was a curious instrument, not to be taken seriously as it stretched and changed.

The first of many peculiar changes was the sense that his skin was shrinking, pulling itself taught over his face like a thin rubber sheet. His eyes hung open simple because his lids were pulled apart and there wasn't enough skin to spare to try and shut them. This lasted for an uncomfortable few seconds, in which he became aware of Sherlock's great black coat rustling softly beside him, as though it contained a small animal that wished to be free, but knew not the exit of the thick, suffocating fabric.

Then relief came with the ticklish notion that his bones were shrinking. He felt the wondrous, sonorous rumblings of small vibrations from his chest all the way to his toes and back. His teeth were chattering. His whole body was alive and rumbling. He could no longer see, or breathe. If he were forced to hazard a guess as to why (although, truly he didn't care much for anything that happened during his metamorphosis, or what he liked to think of as his _period of a hallucinogenic-neurotic-breakdown_) he would have said his forehead became like an oversized hood and slumped down over his face.

This part of the transformation was allayed when the first part of the transformation seemed to start over again. And again. And again.

Naturally, all he could focus on while this was happening was the deep, piercing screaming that erupted from him in between gasps for air and the occasional pained grunt when a part of his body that was not made for shrinking suddenly snapped with an outpour of tender relief from that particular area. The tension gradually crackled and groaned its way out of his body, leaving him feeling heavy and quite boneless lying face-down on the tile.

There was a consciousness John tried to cling to at first, but as his body disfigurement became more and more grotesque he wished only to slip into a dream and leave the nightmare on another plane. If John Watson was going to be whatever was left of the trembling, twisted heap sprawled across the floor, then John did not want to be John anymore. He wanted everything to become simpler, kinder and saner.

And so John slipped away from himself and his body, tucking grown-up fears and worries away in a corner of his mind that had folded itself perfectly around an unacceptable reality and hid all the unpleasantries from detection. Not only that, but he hid all memories associated with the unpleasantness. He was stripped down to the barest of a human being, the rawest, most innocent form of the man who had once been a Captain in a desert in a war in a dream.

But he did not hide them very well, and not for very long.

* * *

**Never before have I explored the physical and mental changes that the gas inflicts on the heroes. Check.**

**Next Chapter: Fan favorite character makes his first starring appearance!**


	106. Coffee

Coffee.

Breathe. Drive. Blink. More Coffee.

Look left, right, left. Drive. More Coffee.

Blink.

Sgt. Sally Donovan had nails that were slightly too long for a police officer. She cleaned them absently while DI Lestrade grumpily drove across a darkened, nearly abandoned London, sucking down the life giving brown juice that the entire British infrastructure ran on.

"Another lab," she said pointedly.

Lestrade grunted.

"And if we find clothes again?"

Lestrade grunted.

"You have to report them somehow, or at least figure out what kind of crazy idea The Freak is trying out on you this time."

Lestrade took a thoughtful sip of his cold coffee and made a meaningful grunt in response.

"There has to be some kind of reason for it," she pressed, relaying the same tired argument she'd tried so many times in the past week. It was a wonder Lestrade responded at all, he should just tune her out. "I'll give Freak and his friend benefit of the doubt: maybe they're being set up for something. Or stalked by someone with creepy thoughts. You have to interrogate him!"

Lestrade slowed to a gentle stop and turned to her.

"If _you're_ so curious, why don't _you_ ask him?" he grumbled.

Sally crossed her arms. "He doesn't _like_ me." She huffed angrily.

"Imagine that." Lestrade let the first smile of the early morning tug at the corners of his lips.

* * *

**Sorry for the delay. Truth be told I'm not really focused on writing. I've started watching Doctor Who... And it takes up most of my waking hours. **


End file.
